


Manunkind

by avocadomoon



Category: Charmed (TV 1998)
Genre: Alternate Universes, Dimension Travel, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-06
Updated: 2020-01-04
Packaged: 2020-06-23 17:18:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 43,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19705933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avocadomoon/pseuds/avocadomoon
Summary: listen: there's a hellof a good universe next door; let's go





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warning for discussion of suicide and suicidal intention/behavior

_"No. You were trying to get yourself killed, which is what this family does best - get killed. Isn't it obvious by now that our only destiny is to die?"_

_**Charmed Again, Part I** _

.

He looked so different, was Piper's first thought. He was taller - though of course he was taller, this version of her son was much older, at least thirty at first glance, if not older - but still somehow it took her aback. The Chris from years ago, the one she'd lost - he'd only had a few inches on her, tops. But this version - this Chris, standing in her living room, squinting at her suspiciously like she was a demon - was at least six feet tall. 

His face seemed different too - his jawline was more pronounced, though that could've just been the beard that made it seem that way. And he had a very dark tan. Much darker than her own son's was - it looked like this Chris had spent most of his life outside. There were tiny lines around his eyes - laugh lines, frown lines. His face looked almost gaunt, like he hadn't eaten in months. 

"Let's calm down," Phoebe said. "We didn't do this on purpose, okay? Nobody did this to you on purpose. And we can send you back, but you need to let us figure out what happened first - "

"I know what happened," Chris said. This other Chris. A stranger version of Chris. "I know exactly what happened, I _told_ you what happened. Your daughter summoned me, and then destroyed the circle, which means I'm now _trapped_ here, unless we can find a path back to my universe. Which also trapped _your_ Chris in mine, by the way," he finished sharply, looking up at Piper. She found herself breathless, beneath his sharp, angry gaze. "Did I mention that enough times for you to get it? Your son is in _my universe._ " He looked around and scoffed. "I really doubt he's prepared for what he just walked into."

"Hey," Phoebe said, glancing worriedly at Piper, "let's not freak out just yet, okay? And we don't need to play the blame game, mister - PJ was just trying to help - "

"Help with what?!" Chris said incredulously. Behind him, a light bulb in the hallway popped, spraying glass across the carpet. Piper flinched, but nobody else seemed to even notice. "What could bringing me here and then _stranding_ me possibly help with?!"

"Chris was having nightmares," Piper heard herself say. She flinched again when Phoebe and the other Chris turned to look at her - one look being exponentially more friendly than the other. "He was...they were more like visions, really. They were keeping him up at night - PJ found a spell that she thought was a vision quest, they were trying to figure out where they were coming from - find a way to stop them - "

"They didn't tell us," Phoebe said, glancing over her shoulder at the kids, who were huddled together in the observatory. They'd cast a silencing spell so they couldn't eavesdrop, but it didn't look like PJ and Wyatt were particularly interested anyway - PJ was obviously still upset, hunched over on the couch. And Wyatt was just staring at them, his face stricken. 

The other Chris didn't follow their gaze. "Messing around with things they didn't understand," he said dismissively. "At the very least, she should've known not to release a circle before she knew what the fuck it was she did. I mean, how old is she, and she doesn't know that yet? What the hell have you even been teaching her?"

" _Hey,_ " Phoebe said sharply, a bit more angrily than before. 

"No," Chris replied, just as angry. "No. Do you have _any_ idea - " he stopped mid-sentence, taking a deep breath. His hands were visibly shaking, he was so angry. Piper could feel the suppressed emotion coming off of him in waves - the same sort of energy that demons gave off, when they'd get really pissed off. She and Phoebe exchanged wary glances, taking a step back from in tandem, which only seemed to irritate him more. "Oh, for fuck's sake. I'm not going to attack you."

"Then maybe cool it with the vibes, buddy!" Phoebe said, incredulous. Another light bulb in the hallway popped. "Everyone just needs to calm down - we're not gonna get anything accomplished when we're upset - "

"You don't get it, do you?" Piper couldn't stop thinking of him as a stranger, even though he was clearly her son - a version of her son. But it wasn't just the physical changes that were so disconcerting - it was his presence, the expression on his face, even the way he talked. His accent sounded different somehow, though Piper couldn't really say what exactly was different - and he seemed more intimidating, colder. It reminded her of the times that she'd met evil versions of herself and her sisters - though they'd already seen him orb, so they knew he wasn't a version of Chris who'd turned. That didn't mean he was good, though. Just because you weren't evil didn't make you a good person. "There are millions of universes, Phoebe. Billions. To find my specific one again - " he cut himself off again, closing his eyes briefly as he seemed to struggle for words. Or control. "Releasing the circle means she cut off the connection she formed between our two worlds. Finding it again is going to be… _extremely_ difficult."

Piper felt her heart drop into her stomach, chilled more by the tone in his voice than by his words. "We'll find it," she said, adopting her 'Prue voice' - the one she used when she was scared. "There's no other option. We'll figure it out."

"You have the Power of Three here?" Chris scanned the room quickly, like a soldier. His shoulders were still tense, and he avoided the doorway into the conservatory - where Wyatt was still plainly visible. 

"Yes - you don't?" Phoebe asked.

Chris didn't answer. "We'll need a necromancer, and someone who knows enough about quantum computing to help us narrow it down. I assume _PJ_ doesn't have many astrophysicist friends?"

Phoebe frowned again, looking offended, but Piper cut her off before this could get any worse. "We'll figure it out," she said again, her voice sounding on the edge of desperate even to her own ears. It was sinking in, finally - the fact that _her_ Chris was gone. Gone, sucked into a summoning circle, dumped out into a world of who-knows-what. Not a pleasant universe, judging by the clothes this Chris was wearing - patched together, sewn together, dirt ground into the fabric. His hands were scarred at the knuckles, and everything about him looked worn in and worn _down_ \- even his jacket, which was the newest looking part of his outfit, looked like it'd been through a war. 

_He probably has,_ Piper thought with a chill. She couldn't let Wyatt talk to this person for too long. She couldn't risk it. 

"Let's hope so," Chris snapped. "For my sake and your son's."

"Okay," Phoebe said briskly, clearly still pissed off, "let's cut the attitude, okay? It was a mistake, it happened - we'll figure it out, but you're not helping by being a _jackass_."

"Oh, I'm sorry," Chris snapped, cutting the words into the air cruelly, "I tend to get a little touchy when I get _kidnapped by an alternate universe._ "

"Nobody kidnapped you," Piper said numbly. "It wasn't - it wasn't deliberate. It was a mistake."

"I have a family back there," Chris continued, as if she hadn't even spoken. His face was dark with anger - Piper had never seen such fury in her son before. In _any_ version of her son. "People who count on me. People who are going to _miss_ me. People who depend on me to survive. What the fuck am I supposed to - " Another abrupt stop, and another light bulb in the hallway, giving up the dust. Phoebe took a wary step closer, her shoulder hitting Piper's. Forming a line of defense, between this strange, angry Chris, and their children - still watching from the other side of a spell in the other room. "I need to go. I need to get the fuck out of here."

"Clearly," Phoebe snapped. Her face was troubled, though. 

"What's - " Chris broke off again, finally turning his head to look at Wyatt. His face was pale, wracked with pain, and Piper thought: _oh._ "Never mind."

"It's normal," Piper said, choking the words out through a thick throat. She felt Phoebe's arm come up around her back - helping keep her upright. "He's normal. We stopped it here. _You_ stopped it."

Chris didn't seem to be listening. "I can't be here right now." He seemed to be talking mostly to himself. Reaching up, he laid one shaking hand against his forehead, shooting another haunted look at Piper, his face still frozen with some unknowable pain. "I'll be in touch."

"Don't go far," Phoebe said sternly, but the words were lost to his orbs - which also seemed different, somehow. Usually when her husband or her sons orbed in and out of a room, it felt like a gentle shower of scented water - like running through a sprinkler when she was a kid, a gentle tingle against her magical senses that was always like a breath of fresh air. This Chris, though - his orbs were a darker blue, and the sensation they left behind was anything but pleasant. Piper found herself breathless again - as if all the air had suddenly been sucked out of the room. He'd taken all the oxygen with him, when he went.

"Honey. Honey, deep breaths," Phoebe was saying. Her voice sounded faraway at first, and then Piper blinked, and realized she was sitting down - her legs crumpled beneath her, Phoebe's hands squeezing her wrists tightly. Over her sister's shoulder was her son - standing in the doorway, still on the other side of the silencing spell, but clearly yelling something, looking frantic with worry. "Piper, sweetie, you're hyperventilating. Try to breathe slowly - should I call Leo? Oh my God - "

"I'm fine," Piper said with a gasp, "I'm fine." She waved her hand at Wyatt, trying to get him to calm down, but he just glared back at her, his arms crossed. "Oh God, Phoebe. That was _Chris._ "

Phoebe knelt next to her and hugged her fiercely. Piper leaned into the circle of her arms, and closed her eyes, and thought: _not again. Please, please, please not again._

"That was a version of Chris, yeah," Phoebe whispered, "and our Chris is still out there. It was just a mistake, right? Just a spell gone wrong. We've faced worse, we've all lived through worse. Don't panic - we're gonna fix this."

 _We'll fix it, we'll fix it,_ Piper thought. Over Phoebe's shoulder, Wyatt was staring at her, his eyes wide. _We'll fix it,_ she tried to say. But the words didn't come out. 

.

Chris had only told her about them - the nightmares - at the last possible second, because as usual he kept everything to himself until he was absolutely backed into the corner. Usually the person backing him up was Wyatt, and Piper herself did her part as the corner. They had it down to a system. 

"Wyatt said you woke up screaming again," she said. Chris twitched and avoided her gaze, locking his eyes on the kitchen counter instead. But Piper was used to that. "Chris, honey. If something happened to you - "

"Jeez, Mom," he said, twitching again. 

" - if somebody is _hurting_ you, then you need to tell me. There's no shame in this kitchen. Only acceptance, and love." She reached out and placed her hands on his shoulders, ignoring his deep, full-body cringe. "Is someone bad-touching you, son?"

"I hate you," Chris said, pushing her hands away. She glimpsed part of a grin, hastily wiped away with a shake of his head. She smirked at him, triumphant, and he rolled his eyes. "They're just dreams. It's nothing."

"Okay, for real now," Piper said, sliding onto a stool. "Waking up screaming is not nothing. Talk to me."

"We all have nightmares. You have nightmares," Chris said, just this side of defensive. 

"I have the weirdest, most complex case of PTSD the world has ever seen," Piper agreed. "Yes, this is true. I have nightmares. But you know how I deal with nightmares? I talk to your dad about them. Or the aunts. And I cry, and get massages, and I _deal with them,_ Chris. I don't pretend they don't exist."

Chris looked sullen. "That's not what I'm doing."

"Oh, sure. I definitely believe you."

Chris sighed, and Piper could see the exact moment when he gave in - he always had the same look on his face. The annoyed _ugh, Mom_ look that seemed absolutely universal - regardless of timeline. "It's...a vision. Visions. They come at night when I sleep."

Piper was instantly alarmed. "You're not precognitive."

"No, but I know they're real." Chris looked firm - centered in the truth of what he was saying. He never said or did anything that he wasn't sure about - even when he was little. Every action was deliberate. "I think it might be from...you know. The other me. The one who died."

Piper swore she felt her heart stop for a second. But she was used to that. 

It wasn't a surprise so much that he'd been hiding it - eventually he confessed that they'd started almost _three years_ before, and it was only recently that Wyatt had found out - but Piper did want to punch herself in the face for not putting the pieces together. Three years - that's when Chris dropped all those classes, and abruptly gave up on his college plans to study at Magic School instead. And two years ago was when he started dating - determinedly, taking out girl after girl after girl with a focused intent that was frankly a little weird, never actually settling down into dating just _one._ He was experimenting, Paige said. _He's only sixteen - he'll figure it out. Maybe he's questioning, maybe he's attracted to men and he's trying to talk himself out of it, or maybe he got his heart broken - we don't know, and he won't tell you if you push. Just keep an open mind and be there for him._

Well, Piper had tried. She always tried to do those two things, at least - but Chris hadn't told her anything. He just kept taking out those girls - literally anyone, he wasn't choosy - and Piper would eavesdrop on their conversations sometimes, standing at that spot in the kitchen where you could hear whoever was on the porch through the open window, and the way that he talked to them - that smooth, practiced flirting, the noncommittal answers, the charming way he'd talk them out of being angry, and then drop them the very next day - it _worried_ her.

"What's the worst that could happen? He turns into a bit of a player?" Phoebe always brushed it off. She always thought that Piper's anxiety was an overreaction, which Piper would get really offended by if she didn't do the same thing to Phoebe - they kept each other's neuroticisms balanced, that way. "He's a teenage boy. Come on, Piper. Relax a little. He's allowed to be a jerk sometimes. He'll figure it out - he's a good person."

Right. Piper knew that. Still, it was such an abrupt change - she should've known. She should've figured out that something else was going on. 

"He's older," Chris told her. "He has a wife. I don't know her name - most of the visions I get of her are…" he cleared his throat. "Well."

"God," Piper muttered. Figures. "What else?"

"It's definitely the old timeline," Chris said. "The one he erased, when he came back. Sometimes I get them when he's outside, and the landscape is always...apocalyptic. There's like, ruins of buildings everywhere, but the people just sort of...live among it all. There was one I had where he was at some kind of...barbecue? There were a bunch of whitelighters and witches hanging around in this big park, and right there in the middle was a building that had been destroyed by some kind of explosion. There were kids just climbing all over the rubble like it was a jungle gym." Chris shook his head. "The air always smells like sulfur. Like...when a potion goes wrong. It's like his whole world smells like that."

Piper took a deep breath. "What about the ones that make you scream, sweetheart?"

Chris' face darkened. "I don't wanna talk about those. No offense." He looked faintly ill. "He...he had a really rough time when he was a kid."

Piper felt pretty sick herself, reaching out her arms to hug him. He indulged her for longer than he usually did, which spoke volumes to his emotional state. Usually he was all hands off - another thing that had started a few years before. Piper really wanted to punch herself. 

Wyatt and Chris both knew better than to use magic for personal gain, but PJ...PJ was a different story. Piper loved her to death, but she had Phoebe's recklessness combined with Coop's rock-solid assurance that she was always doing the right thing, which often became a dangerous combination. Even when she was little, she lived up as Prue's namesake in that sense - always rushing forward, damn the consequences. And she was charming, too - cute and convincing enough that she could get Wyatt and Chris into trouble, just because they all had a tendency to indulge her. 

"I didn't know," PJ said, babbling desperately from the circle of Phoebe's arms. Piper's own arms ached to hug her too, but they were too busy with Wyatt - vibrating with tension, on the edge of either a panic attack or an explosion, Piper kept her hands firmly on his shoulders, leaning hard just to keep him in his seat. "I didn't know - Chris checked my incantation, he thought it would work - it wasn't supposed to _suck him in_ like that - "

"Shh," Phoebe said, stroking her hair. "It wasn't your fault. It was an accident, okay? Look at me. Say it."

"It was an accident," PJ said faintly. Wyatt twitched beneath Piper's hands, shaking his head at the floor. 

"You still have the spell, right?" Piper felt fairly numb still, her earlier panic now faded into a filtered sort of horror. It was like she was looking at her own fear through a window. "You wrote it down? Including the ingredients?"

"Of course," PJ said. 

"Then we'll fix it," Piper said. If she said it enough times, maybe it'll get more convincing. 

"Who was that?" Wyatt asked. "That other Chris. It was the one from the original timeline, right? Instead of getting rid of the visions, the spell somehow _summoned_ him."

"It was," Phoebe said carefully, making grim eye contact with Piper, "a version of your brother, yes."

"But how is that possible? You said that he died," Wyatt said. He turned to look at Piper. "He was killed by Gideon nineteen years ago."

"The visions Chris was having weren't just from our original timeline," Piper said quietly. Both PJ and Wyatt both snapped her heads around to look at each other, eyes wide. "The details didn't always match up. We think he was probably seeing glimpses of...someone else. A different universe altogether."

"Like the mirror universe?" PJ asked. She turned to look at her mother. "Where all the good people are evil and vice versa?"

"There's more than one, honey," Phoebe said soothingly. "This Chris is still good - we think. But he's from a much worse universe than ours - one where things still went wrong."

Wyatt was silent. Piper squeezed his shoulders, bracingly, but he didn't react. 

"Chris isn't psychic though," PJ said quietly. She still looked miserable. "That's why we thought we could fix it with the spell - it was an unnatural connection."

"He's…" Piper trailed off helplessly, making eye contact with Phoebe again. If only the kids had _said_ something. If only they'd explained everything to Chris, instead of trying to protect him by not saying anything. "No, he's not psychic. But." Wyatt twitched again, turning to look at Piper once more. The look on his face was accusatory, and Piper's heart skipped a beat. "But he has a...a power that's similar. It's sort of a power. It happened because of the other Chris - the one who traveled back in time when I was pregnant with him."

"Paradoxes," Wyatt said suddenly, his eyes bright, already making the connection. 

Piper nodded. "That other Chris," she said, pausing to clear her throat, "he died at the same time that our Chris was born. So while they're different people, they - well, we don't know how souls work, exactly. But your father - he was with him when he died, and." Piper's voice failed again. 

"The other Chris saved his life," Phoebe said gently. "Not only did he ensure that our Chris was born, he prevented Paige's death, and kept our world from descending into darkness. But because he stopped all that from happening, he essentially erased his own existence. The version of Chris that went back in time in the first place was never born - but without him being there, then _this_ world would've never existed, and - bam! Paradox."

"So it gave our Chris these visions?" PJ asked, stricken. "What kind of stupid power is that?"

"We don't know yet, honey," Phoebe said. She pulled PJ back into the circle of her arms. "This is all just guessing. But the visions Chris described - we know they were from at least two different timelines. The details…" she looked over at Piper. "We think he was seeing lots of different versions of himself. And Uncle Leo is pretty sure it has to do with what happened to Future Chris."

"Same day," Piper said hoarsely. Wyatt reached up and squeezed her hands, and she smiled at him weakly. "Same hour. Same exact moment, we're pretty sure."

"Why didn't you tell him?" Wyatt asked. His voice was gentle, though. "You didn't want him to know?"

"He knew," Piper confessed. She shook her head, closing her eyes against the threatening tears. "He worked most of it out on his own. He was the one having them, after all. But he refused to talk about it much, and I just…" Piper shook her head. "I thought he would've talked to _you_ , at least."

Wyatt shook his head, stricken. "He didn't talk about what the visions were about. Like, ever," he said. "But we knew they were getting worse, so we came up with the idea on his own...we convinced him to try it. He was indulging us, I'm pretty sure." His shoulders slumped. "I knew he didn't think it would work."

"This is all just speculation, remember," Phoebe said sternly. "Nothing like this has ever happened before - no other witch has successfully changed time on such a scale that we know of. We don't really _know_ what these visions meant, and that's the truth."

"We made it worse," PJ said tearfully. "We sent him _away._ Now he's out there somewhere lost, because of us - "

"No," Piper said. Phoebe held PJ tightly, looking teary herself. They looked so similar, huddled together there on the couch. "No. The spell should've worked - all three of you, you're smart. You're good spellcrafters. And Chris was meticulous about this stuff - it should've worked. If there was something wrong in your spell, then it would've just...exploded or something, not _opened a portal,_ for God's sake." Piper shook her head, firming her jaw. "Something else had to have interfered - some unknown quantity we didn't know about. Those are two completely different forms of magic, after all - it couldn't have been the spell's fault."

"I shouldn't have broken the circle," PJ said, anguished. "But I thought - maybe it would undo it."

Phoebe sighed, pulling PJ's head down to her shoulder. PJ went willingly, burying her face in the collar of her mother's sweater. 

"We'll figure it out." Wyatt sounded eerily like Leo in that moment - assured, confident, yet still gentle, somehow - never domineering. "We'll get him back."

"Right," Piper said. There was no other option. 

.

They didn't tell Paige, not yet. Henry was still in the hospital - shot in the line of duty a few weeks before, and he was still flat out refusing to be healed by Paige and Leo. _What will everyone at work think? I know you guys throw around those memory spells like they're nothing, but we should at least try some good old fashioned secret keeping._ Needless to say, Paige wasn't handling it well. 

"She's gonna kill us," Phoebe muttered, climbing the stairs to the attic a few steps behind Piper, her feet heavy on the ancient wood. "Even if we manage to get him back before she finds out, she's still gonna kill us - "

"Tough cookies," Piper said, and elbowed the attic door open. Inside, the remains of the spellcrafting circle were still scattered across the floor - dried rosemary and willow branches from the yard, haphazardly kicked aside and scattered across the rug. The potion the kids had used had congealed in the scrying bowl. "Leo!"

"I'll try to find the entry in the Book they used," Phoebe said, stepping carefully over the debris from the circle. "I know they adapted it but maybe it'll help."

"Maybe," Piper said. She stomped her foot. "Leo!"

"He's still in Conference, sweetie, it might take a bit longer."

"I swear to God, I'm gonna blow up his stupid Conference - _Leo!_ "

Finally, blue orbs rained down from the ceiling and her husband appeared. "What's wrong?" he demanded, before he was even fully formed. Piper stared at him for a second, struggling for words, and Leo frowned down at the remnants of the spell. He was still in his golden Elder robes, which always made him look ridiculous. "What happened?"

"Chris is missing," Phoebe said, without preamble. Leo's shoulders stiffened, and he yanked his head around to look at Piper, the look on his face almost accusatory. "The kids did a spell and accidentally opened a portal. It swapped him out with a version from another dimension."

"What the hell, I was only gone for like seven hours," Leo exclaimed.

"Not helpful," Phoebe chimed in from across the room, already flipping rapidly through the pages of the Book. 

Leo took in the scene quickly: the remnants of the summoning circle, the general disarray of the attic from the winds of the portal, Piper's face, Phoebe's fixed smile. He steeled his shoulders. "Tell me."

Piper did. Leo's expression got darker and darker, and by the end Piper had to physically block the doorway to keep him from storming downstairs to yell at the kids. Fifteen years ago, if someone had told her that _Leo_ would be the hard ass disciplinarian in their marriage, she would've laughed in their face. 

"It wasn't their fault, they thought they were _helping,_ " Phoebe pleaded. "They feel bad enough already, Leo!"

"As bad as they felt when they accidentally turned Henry Jr. into a Valkryie?" Leo demanded. "Or what about the time they did an invisibility spell on the house and almost exposed magic again? Or the time they sneaked Aladdin's Lamp home from Magic School and summoned a genie who almost destroyed the timeline - "

"Fine, you have a point," Piper interrupted. "We'll yell at them later, okay? For now let's just focus on getting Chris back."

Leo breathed in and out, visibly trying to control his temper. "No, my point is that somewhere along the way, we stopped taking 'personal gain' seriously. This is just the latest example, Piper! I thought sending them to Magic School would fix the problem, but clearly it's just made it _worse_."

"Well, that is a much bigger discussion than we have time for right now," Phoebe said nervously. The air in the room was tense, and Piper found herself feeling somewhat removed from it - watching her husband's clear fury as if from very far away. "Shouldn't we be talking about - "

"How they swapped Chris out with a different version of himself?" Leo snapped. He crossed his arms. "Well, he's right. We're going to need a necromancer. Know any, Pheebs?"

Phoebe pressed her lips together, anger starting to brew on her own expression. Piper blinked away her fugue and quickly stepped between them before the conversation got any further away from them than it already was. 

"He also said we needed someone who knew about physics," she said. "But I don't understand - we never needed any special help before, when we opened portals."

"We've never opened this kind of portal before!" Leo snapped. "Time travel is very different from dimension travel, Piper. When you go back and forth in time, you're not physically moving in space at all. But a different dimension altogether? The only experience we had with that was Gideon's mirror, and in that case he had a specific object which anchored his spell. He was also dealing with a mirror dimension - one that was tethered to ours. From what it sounds like, whatever the kids did was something entirely different."

"So we can reduplicate it," Phoebe said hopefully. "If we recreate the exact environment of their spell, wouldn't it - "

"Not necessarily," Leo said. He rubbed his forehead. "Listen. There are millions of universes - billions. An infinite number. Every decision we make creates another one - a dimension in which you had oatmeal for breakfast instead of cereal, or you took the bus to work instead of the train. Imagine that for a second - try to understand it. Every single choice, from every single being in our universe, creates another pocket reality. We couldn't even count them all. Not even if we could try."

Phoebe caught Piper's eye, her face grave and still a little angry. Piper frowned at her, and she averted her gaze quickly, her arms tightening where they were wrapped around her torso.

"What that means is that there's thousands of universes where the kids did this exact spell," Leo continues, "thousands upon thousands of Chrises that were just swapped out. For every single little variation - another Chris. Another version of him that's out of place." He took a deep breath. "We can narrow it down but it's still a matter of sifting through thousands of different choices, in order to find _our_ Chris. And the longer we leave it, the more complex the action, the more choices there are, the more dimensions are created, the more versions of Chris there are to choose from. It's not just a needle in a haystack - it's trying to find a single atom in the whole of the universe. Most people wouldn't even _try._ "

A heavy silence descended, and finally, Piper came back to herself a little. A spark of anger ignited in her chest. "We're not going to just _give up on him._ "

"No, of course not. But it's going to take a lot more than just recreating this spell." Leo shot an angry glare down at the ruined spellcrafting circle. "This is what your Grams meant when she said we'd been too lenient with them. This is the worst case scenario, Piper."

Piper stiffened. "He's not dead," she bit out. "Just lost. We can get him back if he's just lost."

Leo just shook his head, his jaw angrily clenched. 

"Okay," Phoebe interrupted, "we're upset, it's been a terrible day, but I don't think this is productive - "

"You agreed with me when I said she was being melodramatic," Piper said, somewhat numb outside of the anger. "Those were my exact words - 'melodramatic, critical.' You said yes, she was, you told me not to listen to her - "

"I was trying to make you feel better," Leo said. "I've told you a million times that we needed to be more strict with them about following the Wiccan Rede, and _you_ were the one that would brush it off like it was nothing - "

"Guys," Phoebe said, more strenuously. 

"It's kind of hard to enforce rules from both sides when you're hardly ever here," Piper snapped. "They act out more when you're gone, because they want their father's attention! It's easy for you to act all high and mighty when you're not the one dealing with it - "

"That's not fair. That's _not_ fair," Leo said, "they follow your example, and that's the truth. They always have."

"You're part of the example!" Piper said, hearing herself yelling but not really registering it as a deliberate action. It was as if the words themselves took on a life of their own, crawling up out of her throat and into the chilly air between them. "You're part of it, Leo!"

"I'm not a witch, Piper," Leo replied bitterly. "I'm just their _father._ "

"Alright," Phoebe said, physically moving between them, clapping her hands to break the tension. Piper took a surprised step back, and her back hit the attic door. "That's enough. You can fight about this later, but the kids are downstairs probably listening to every word we say right now."

"Because of course they're still using those eavesdropping spells," Leo said, still bitter. "Of course you didn't take their scrying stones away from them - "

" _Enough,_ " Phoebe said sternly, glaring. "That's _my_ kid you're talking about too, Leo. Watch it."

Leo didn't back off, his face stubborn and dark. But he didn't say anything, either. 

"We're not going to fix anything by throwing blame around," Phoebe said, ever the peacemaker, her voice calm and measured. "And maybe you're right, maybe we need to reevaluate some things, but now is _not the time._ You said it yourself, Leo, the longer we leave it, the harder it becomes."

"I need to go back up there," Leo said stiffly. "There are some other Elders that can possibly help. But I'll need to talk to them about it in person."

"Of course you do," Piper muttered, turning her face away. Tears stung her eyes, and she stubbornly ignored them. 

"Go then," Phoebe said, her tone oddly gentle. "Piper and I will focus on the other Chris. He'll need - " she faltered for the first time, and Piper looked at her through watery eyes, her own heart pulsing with a halfhearted, strange sort of pain. "He'll need something. A place to stay...something. We can't just leave him on his own."

Leo still didn't say anything, and Piper didn't look at him. Instead, she wiped her eyes again, and straightened her shoulders. "I'll find him," she said. "I'll do it. You handle the kids, Phoebe. Keep them calm."

"What about Paige?" Leo asked for the first time. "Are we not telling her?"

"The baby," Phoebe said helplessly, "and Henry - we'll hold off for now, but - "

"No," Piper interrupted, meeting his gaze again with a deep breath. "We're not telling her yet."

Leo accepted this with a nod. For a moment, he looked regretful - his face softening just a bit, the smile wrinkles around his eyes appearing for the first time since he'd orbed in. But twenty years together had not yet taught Piper how to forgive easily - she doubted anything could. She'd given up long ago on her marriage ever being easy - at this point she figured they both had made their peace with not being at peace. There was something infinitely sad about that, but at the same time - she knew neither of them would prefer any other option. 

There was something there about good things being worth fighting for, but Piper knew it was more complicated than that. Trying to make something fit that wasn't really made to be worn was more like it. But they were both much too stubborn to give up and put it back in the closet. 

"I'll be back as soon as I can," Leo said, his expression growing distant once more. He hesitated, waiting for Piper to say something, but she didn't, and so he didn't. He orbed out without another word, the blue light illuminating the attic for a warm, brief second. 

Phoebe blew out a careful, tense breath. "Wow."

"He's right," Piper said distantly. "I think he's right, Pheebs."

Phoebe moved, as if to hug her, but Piper turned her shoulder, shaking her head. "Piper, come on."

"I'm just saying." Piper wiped at her eyes again. "I'm gonna scry for Chris. I can use the 'call to powers' spell to get to him. Make sure they eat something. There's leftovers in the fridge from yesterday."

"Piper," Phoebe said again, her face slipping into a strange sort of despair. But Piper closed her eyes, unable to look. 

She didn't want to be comforted. She didn't even want to be awake. 

.

The last time Piper spoke to her youngest son was four days before. Chris had returned early from his college orientation - Amherst College, in Massachusetts. Third oldest university in the United States. A hundred miles away from Salem. The traditional, preferred school for about eight different well-established covens, light _and_ dark, including a few Halliwells (well - they'd still been the Warrens, then), back before the family left the East Coast for sunnier shores. The other side of the country. It hadn't seemed so far away, until he actually went there for the first time. Piper realized, in the scant three days he was gone, that it was a different story altogether when _she_ was the only one in her family who couldn't orb. 

"I don't understand, I thought it was supposed to last a week?" Piper asked him. Chris had returned home at almost midnight, not even halfway through the orientation week. He'd orbed into his bedroom without a word, and Piper wouldn't have even noticed he was back if she hadn't been walking by his doorway at the exact right moment. "The weekend is the fun part, right? Where you go to all the mixers and bonfires, meet the people who will be living in your dorm, make ill-advised decisions, drink underage in parking lots, et cetera…"

"I told you, Mom, I don't drink," Chris said sourly, not seeming to catch onto the fact that she was joking. He'd been fairly stern, in the last few months. Not picking up on any jokes at all, no matter who it was telling it. 

"I'm kidding. I know that," Piper said, sitting tentatively on the edge of his bed. "It's okay if you don't wanna talk about it, honey. But if it went badly, I'd like to know why."

"It didn't go badly," Chris said. 

"Oh right, you just came home super early for no reason?"

Chris shrugged. What drove Piper crazy was that she knew extremely well how he could hide things from her. He was the only one in their family who had mastered self-healing - not even Leo could manage to do it as well, there'd always be a few stray bruises - little cuts that wouldn't close up all the way. But Chris could do it like he was born to it - casually, like it was nothing. Piper saw him cut himself once, while chopping a pineapple in the kitchen, and as he shook his injured hand out, shaking the juice and blood off his fingers, the wound disappeared with a little twirl of blue sparks. The blood disappeared too - and the knife and cutting board were cleansed of the spatter, as if it had never happened. The whole thing took a few seconds, tops - and while Piper wasn't sure how severe the cut had been in the first place, it was still a fairly impressive - and slightly disturbing - feat. 

What was ironic was that Chris was also the worst at healing _other_ people. It took him twice as long as three times the effort when it was someone else. Piper suspected it had to do with the fact that Leo had been an Elder when he was conceived - there was something much more self-preserving in Elder magic, much more so than the more gentle omniscience of Whitelighters. Wyatt was suited for that softer, selfless version of his father's legacy - whereas Chris was born with an Elder's strict, cool divinity. 

Come to think of it, Leo himself was always just a little bit more easygoing, when he wasn't an Elder. He'd been on and off the last twenty years - only taking up a seat on the Council when he was needed. Piper could always tell the difference, the moment his magic changed. It was terrifying to think about - so she didn't, most of the time. 

"Mom," Chris said, leaning against the wall in his bedroom and not doing much looking at her. As he'd gotten older Piper had struggled not to take offense at how withdrawn he became in her presence - the annoyance she could hear in his voice sometimes when she'd try to chat with him. _Teenagers don't always stay friends with their moms,_ she'd tell herself. _It's okay he wants some space. He has to have his own life. He'll always come back to you. He loves you, Piper, he loves you._ "Do you think I'm making a mistake?"

"What, choosing a school so far away?" The question felt like a trap. "I think you had good reasons for picking Amherst. It's very different from California - I think it'll be good for you to live there for awhile. And it's not that far when you can orb, Chris."

"No, going to college at all," Chris said. "I could keep going to Magic School. They have apprenticeships, and general education classes. I could earn a Bachelor's by self-study and then study with one of the professors - Madame Dandurand told me I could study with her anytime I wanted. She thinks I could be a professor one day."

Piper resisted the instinctual urge to frown at the name; Madame Dandurand was one of Paige's formerly-evil 'projects,' a reformed demonic Seer who still gave Piper the creeps. But she'd been Chris's favorite teacher, and by all accounts, completely reformed. Other than her tendency to curse in front of the children, anyway. "Don't you think you'd be making an impulsive decision, if you did that now? You've always known about that option, honey. But you wanted to go to a real college, you wanted to make mortal friends. You've been planning this move for months." Piper waved her hands at his room, which had already begun making its way into boxes, in preparation for the move. "Come on. You had a bad week, and you're just gonna give up?"

"I didn't ask you to try and convince me of anything, I asked if _you_ thought it was a mistake," Chris said with a scowl. "I know I'm being impulsive. I did have a bad week. No, I don't wanna talk about it - "

"Chris," Piper said with a frown. 

"I don't wanna talk about it," Chris repeated firmly. "Just tell me what you really think. That's what would help. Your actual, unfiltered opinion. I think I'm old enough."

Piper reached out and grasped his hand. Chris allowed it for a moment, smiling faintly, squeezing her fingers gently. His hand was already bigger than hers - a man's hand. There was some hair on his knuckles; calluses that were already forming on his palms from his summer job with a construction outfit. Honest work, he'd wanted. _Real work,_ he'd said. "Chris, I love you so much it hurts sometimes. I'm a mother, and I'm an anxious person. So of course if you ask me what I _want,_ then I want you to stay here. It makes me feel calmer having you in the house - not just because I can keep an eye on you, but because _you_ can keep an eye on _us._ " She raised an eyebrow. "Wyatt and PJ look up to you, and so will Henry Jr and Peyton, when they're old enough. And don't think you don't keep your aunts in line, as well."

Chris grinned, a fleeting flash of teeth. 

"But I know we rely on you too much. I rely on you too much," Piper admitted. "It was a lot of pressure, I know that. That's on us."

"I didn't mind," Chris said. 

"We still shouldn't have done it," Piper insisted. "Your brother has always been reckless, and we didn't always know how to temper that, so we let you do it for us. That wasn't right." She reached out and squeezed his hand again, unable to help herself. "You just naturally took to it - even when you were young. You were the big brother, even though you weren't. It was just your personality." A little wiggle of unease, at that thought - the same one for the past nineteen years. The unasked question, in the back of her mind, of how much that other version of her son actually changed, with his final act of sacrifice. "I think...honestly, and I'm not just saying this...I think that it'll be good for you to be away from us for awhile. I think we stress you out a little too much, and even though you don't admit it, you _want_ to be on your own for a bit. It'll be good for you to get away from all this...history." Piper threw a wry look above their heads, at the attic which sits above them at all times, its silent, drawing presence a constant question in the air of their home. "Magic School would do that for you, too. But I think we both know that there's not much more you can learn there."

Chris looked thoughtful, rubbing one palm against his knee. He looked like Leo when he did that. 

"If you want to have a life outside of us," Piper said, with a deep, fortifying breath, "then you need to go out and find one, Chris. It's not going to just fall in your lap."

"Yeah," Chris said. "If I _want_ that."

"Well, I can't answer that question for you. But I don't think you'd be this torn up about it if you didn't," Piper said. 

"I do," Chris said, looking like it cost him a lot to admit it. "But I just…"

Piper kept her mouth shut and waited. Patience was the best way through with Chris. 

"I just realized for the first time how hard it's going to be," he finally admitted. "Most of those kids are never going to understand. They've lived these really safe, boring lives, and it was hard for me to…"

 _Care?_ Piper finished his sentence in her own head. "There are witches and demons in Massachusetts too, Chris."

"I know that," Chris said. 

"So go find them! You were at the weirdest, most awkward week of college at a mortal school - I'm almost positive that you weren't going to meet any actual friends yet. Everyone's trying too hard, anxious, worried about how they're coming off to everyone else…" Piper hadn't gone to a traditional college, but the culinary institute had had a similar social type of event, the weekend before classes started. A meek, self-conscious nineteen year old, Piper had stayed just long enough to be able to tell Grams she'd given it a real try, and then fled for the safety of her bedroom. She'd stayed up all night reading _Mists of Avalon_ and eating barbecue Pringles chips. 

Piper cannot imagine Chris, in any universe, eating Pringles chips. He came out of the womb with much better taste - he'd probably disown her if she ever tried to get him to try them. 

"But it's the experience that matters, right?" Chris asked wryly. 

"Something like that." Piper smiled at him. "Would you like to hear another one of my embarrassing stories?"

"Mom, I live for your embarrassing stories," Chris said with a grin, and so Piper told him about the barbecue chips. He laughed in all the right places, and even managed to make her feel a little better about the memory, somehow. He was always so empathetic like that - sensing when someone needed to be reassured, and pulling it off without embarrassing them. Piper liked to think he got that from her, but in all reality it was probably Phoebe or Leo. 

The memory burns a little; she'd meant to take him out for breakfast, to try and cheer _him_ up, but there'd been a minor disaster at the club and Piper was stuck at work until well into the early hours of the morning, the next day. Then Chris left to go see some friends - he was frustratingly vague about who - and didn't return until the following day. And then the next time Piper saw him was in passing - as he grabbed a bottle of water from the kitchen, on his way to the attic, where PJ and Wyatt were waiting for him. 

"Some kind of vision quest thing," he'd told her, with a dismissive shrug. "It'll be quick. Probably a dud, anyway, since PJ wrote the spell. You know how she is."

"She tries," Piper said, swatting his arm. She'd been distracted by her cooking; she hadn't thought to say anything. She hadn't thought anything of it at all - the kids were always doing spells up in the attic. They'd long since stopped monitoring what they were doing - they trusted them to be responsible. 

They _trusted_ their children. That's what Leo had ignored, in his accusations. Maybe not Wyatt and PJ, but...they trusted _Chris._ He was the one who always kept them in line, just like she'd said. All those mistakes and near disasters he mentioned - they happened when Chris wasn't around. Just his mere presence tended to have a calming effect on everyone - his stern, no-nonsense approach to magic was a good influence on his brother and his cousin. 

The exact thing that Piper had _just_ admitted was a bad habit. And the _one time_ it didn't work. If the universe was stupid enough to try and tell her something by putting her kid in danger - well, it had another thing coming, that's for sure. 

.

Piper found him at a bar in the Castro, still wearing the same worn down, apocalyptic outfit - though it looked like he'd down some sort of cleaning spell, enough to allow him to escape scrutiny in public. He was at the bar, arguing with someone in Spanish, and he didn't look up when Piper approached. 

"Chris," she said. 

"Estás diciendo que no sabes," Chris said. The man he was arguing with - older, grey at his temples, very obviously a warlock of some kind, judging by the ring of black smoke hovering at his wrists - shrugged. "Eres estúpido o simplemente ciego?"

"Maybe both," the warlock answered, in a perfectly normal American accent. Piper blinked, wondering why Chris was even bothering with Spanish, before she remembered the translation spell she'd cast on herself years ago, so she could understand the Latin chants at the Magic School graduation ceremonies. It was a lifetime spell, unless it was broken - she'd forgotten all about it. Chris was probably immune, being a good witch. "Perhaps you should stick around to find out. Call me some more names, see where it takes you."

"Quieres una cita, cariño?" Chris asked, clearly a taunt by his voice. "Todo lo que tiene que hacer es preguntar."

"Listen, you son of a bitch," the warlock said, and Piper didn't wait any longer, reaching out with her hands to freeze the entire bar. The warlock froze, arm halfway extended, sparkling energy of a half-formed spell hovering in the palm of his open hand. Chris turned with sharp irritation, and glared at her. 

"Seriously?" he asked. 

"It's rude to throw a party and not invite your mother," Piper said, and gestured with her hands again. The warlock's glass of liquor exploded and then froze, a few seconds into a deadly spray of glass into the older man's face, providing a helpful distraction once time resumed. 

"You're _not_ my mother," Chris said pointedly, and moved out of the blast zone of the exploding glass. 

Piper breathed through the sting of hearing that in such a familiar voice. "Making friends?"

He rolled his eyes. Piper was struck again by how different he was from her Chris - the way he held himself was stiffer, his stance defensive, his muscles much more defined than she'd thought before, now that she saw them up close. His beard changed the whole shape of his face and made it hard to gauge his age, though Piper was sure that he was at least over thirty. The faint wrinkles around his eyes gave him away. "What do you want?"

"What do you think I want?" Piper eyed the frozen warlock over his shoulder, uneasy by his presence. Her powers were stronger than they'd ever been - she could keep the whole block frozen forever if she wanted - but she'd met too many powerful black magic users who could fight through it not to worry. "What were you asking him about?"

"I was trying to find something that might help me get home," Chris said shortly. He glanced derisively at the warlock. "I didn't need your help."

"I know that. But you got it anyway," Piper said. "Let's get out of here before he unfreezes. I don't like the look of that bartender."

"Thanks, but no thanks," Chris said, already moving away. "I've got to get going. There are other leads."

"Chris," Piper said, following him out into the floor of the small bar. This seemed to be one of those in-the-know places, frequented by magicals and mortals who knew more than most. There were two women frozen by the pool table, and one of them had a demonic rune tattooed on the back of her hand. The bouncer had a sage smudging stick on his little table, right next to his UV light and stamp pad. "Don't be stupid. You know we have to work together if we're going to make any headway on this - "

"It's only been like, a fucking hour. Stop following me!" Chris turned on one heel, near the doorway, and pinned her with a furious glare. "I just needed a break; I wasn't planning on running away to Mars or anything."

"You have a Mars in your universe?" Piper weakly joked. "Well - we might not be as far apart as we thought then."

Chris rubbed one of his temples, grimacing deeply. Yeah, she didn't think it was that funny, either. 

"We don't have to go back to the Manor," Piper said, phrasing it like a compromise, although she hadn't been planning on taking him back there in the first place. "We can go to my club - P3? Does that exist in your - in your world?" Chris's face was unreadable. "Well - anyway, I own a nightclub. Nobody will be there. We're closed on Mondays. It's sort of a tradition here, for bars - nobody's open on Mondays." She was aware, dimly, that she was babbling a little, but she couldn't help herself. "I just - there's a room? An office, but you could...use it, if you wanted. I have clothes too, and food - you could have some privacy, wash up a little, whatever you want - I understand why you'd be uncomfortable at the house, but I figured maybe - "

"Fine. Jesus. Stop talking." Chris winced again, like she was giving him a headache just with her presence. "Thank you for the offer, but I can find my own accommodation. I'll come see your little club if you want me to, though." He grimaced again. "Just to talk."

"But you don't even have any money," Piper blurted, then felt like kicking herself. "No offense."

"I'm a fucking witch," Chris said, like she was being particularly stupid. Though Piper was starting to think that this Chris sort of thought _everyone_ was a little stupid. "Why in the hell would I need money?"

Piper struggled for words for a second. "Is personal gain not a thing where you come from?"

"It's not personal gain if you're using magic to survive, first of all, and second of all you really don't wanna go down that road with me right now," Chris snapped. "The only reason I'm standing here at all is because your children just took a shit all over the Wiccan Rede."

Piper winced at the vulgarity. "Hey now - "

"Heads up," Chris interrupted, and the room unfroze. Piper whirled around in surprise - she hadn't meant to unfreeze it, had something happened? - and the warlock by the bar screamed in pain as the glass exploded in his face. The women by the pool table straightened up in alarm, and the bouncer rose quickly to his feet, narrowing his eyes at Chris and Piper. "We better get out of here," Chris said, moving forward to grip her elbow. "Have you figured out how to teleport yet?"

"Yet?!" Piper asked incredulously, snapping her head around to glare at him. "You did that, didn't you? _You_ unfroze the room - "

"I don't know what you're talking about," Chris said, and orbed them out before she could muster a reply. The last thing she saw before the bar dissolved into blue light was the warlock storming towards them in rage, his hands outstretched threateningly. Blood was streaming down his face, making him look rather terrifying. 

(Then again, Piper had seen much worse.)

They reappeared inside of P3, smack dab in the middle of the empty dance floor. Piper staggered back a few steps, lightheaded, and Chris reached out to steady her with one hand. He smelled like sage and rye whiskey.

"What," she sputtered. That didn't feel like regular orbing. Her head was spinning. "How did you know where - "

"P3 existed in my world," Chris said, keeping his hand against her shoulder as she grasped for her bearings. "I never said it didn't."

"Smug ass," she muttered, shaking his hand off. She blinked up at him, seeing his smirk, and was reminded of the first Chris she ever met - the one she'd gotten to know as a person first, before she knew he was her son. "Why did you unfreeze the room?"

"The outdoor bouncer is a good witch," Chris said. He pulled back his hand and surveyed the room, one eyebrow angled. "She comes in every ten, fifteen minutes to check on things." He smirked again. "Probably to catch people just like you, barging in and causing trouble."

"Or you?" Piper countered. She moved over to one of the barstools, trying not to make it too obvious that her stomach was still a bit queasy. "You were the one that started that fight."

"He would've thrown a punch at me or something," Chris said with a shrug. "You escalated it by using magic."

"You don't know any of this," Piper accused. "You're not from this universe. Things could be different - you're just guessing."

"An educated guess about the punch maybe, but I'm right about the bouncer. I do my homework," Chris said. He meandered over to the bar, laying his palms out flat on the wooden railing. In the afternoon sun streaming through the window, he looked remarkably like Piper's dad - especially with the beard. "So. I'm here."

"Yes." Now that she's got him, Piper doesn't know what to do with him. "Leo's working on finding some help. He knows some Elders who might be able to do something."

Chris didn't react. Piper had been hoping for something - even a little twitch - but there was nothing. "This place looks nice," he said instead, still looking around with an alert gaze. "You have live music here?"

Piper looks over at the stage, which still has some sound equipment set up from last night's show. They'd left most of it the way it was, since the band had another show tomorrow night. "Yeah." Curiosity made her itchy. "Did it...not? In your world?"

A faint, bitter smirk spread across his face. "P3 went out of business years ago," he said. "I was too young to have ever been there. So I honestly have no idea what it was like."

"But you knew where it was," Piper said. She narrowed her eyes. "That could've changed, between our two universes. We could've ended up in the middle of an interstate or something."

Chris looked faintly amused. "Do you use GPS coordinates to orb, in this universe?" he asked. "I orbed to a place, not an address."

Piper honestly had no idea how orbing worked, being one of the few people in her family who couldn't do it. Even Phoebe had learned how to astral project, a few years back. "What did you mean 'do I know how to teleport yet?'"

"My mother could do it. It's a side benefit of your molecular destabilization power," Chris said. He tilted his head. "You can speed things up to make them explode, slow them down until they freeze. You can move them, too. If you want."

Piper didn't know what to say. The possibility had honestly never occurred to her. 

"It is much harder, don't get me wrong. My mom still has trouble with it sometimes," Chris said. 

Piper felt her mind crash up against an unexpected brick wall. "Wait - your mother is still _alive?_ "

Chris looked surprised by her surprise. "...yes?" he said. He frowned. "Why the hell would you think she wasn't?"

 _Because I'm always dead,_ Piper thought. _That's the one thing that's always true, in all those universes: the Mom always dies._ "I - I just assumed," she stammered, "you obviously come from a...rough place, and - and the visions my Chris was having, I wasn't in them."

"He wasn't having visions of me," Chris said, with a dismissive shake of his head. He slid onto one of the barstools. "Is that what you wanted to talk to me about? The differences between our two worlds?"

"Would it help?" Piper asked. She desperately wanted to know, of course. She always desperately wanted to know what it was that her Chris was seeing too, late at night when he was asleep, his mind drifting about in a place she couldn't reach. But if he was close-lipped with Wyatt, he was practically made of stone, whenever she dared to ask. "Mostly I wanted to keep an eye on you, I'll admit. Until we hear back from Leo we can't do anything, and I have no idea who you even are. What your motivations might be, what kind of havoc you might be out there reaping…you are a Halliwell, after all. Havoc is practically in your DNA."

"Well that's honest," Chris praised, laughing a little, to her surprise. She hadn't expected him to laugh at one of her jokes - her own Chris never did, though he did indulge her with a grin or a smirk from time to time. "This is a bar. Do I have to pay for drinks, or is that a Halliwell privilege too?"

Piper considered. Of course she made her family pay, and even though Wyatt was of age by then, he never would've dared step foot in his mother's bar. But this was, of course, a very strange day. An exception if there ever was one. "What do you like?"

"Anything but beer."

"Good taste," Piper said, and ducked around behind the bar. She could be a hundred years old, and she'd still be able to mix a killer cocktail with her eyes closed. It was the talent she knew would never go away. "I'll make you something good."

.

He seemed more relaxed, here in this environment, a drink in his hand and a smile on his face. Piper didn't drink much herself, but she made herself the same cocktail out of solidarity: a Blackberry Smash, spruced up with some rosemary. It was P3's signature drink - she'd invented it herself, about eight years ago. The twist that made it unique was that she used mango instead of plum. 

"This is really fucking good," Chris said, taking a healthy gulp. "Thank you. I needed this."

"You always curse this much, or is just the stress?" Piper asked, sipping her own glass a bit slower. 

"You don't like it? My mother curses a lot." Chris shakes his head, shaking the glass to mix up the ice with the fruity pulp, down at the bottom. "Like, a _lot._ "

"My grandmother used to make us wash our mouths out with soap if she caught us using foul language," Piper said. She winced at herself - _foul language,_ what year was it? "Literal soap. Once is all you need to break that habit."

Chris's expression had sharpened. "Your grandmother?" he asked. "Penelope Halliwell?"

"Let me guess - _she's_ the dead one."

He angled his glass at her as a 'yes.' "Before my mom was even born. What happened to Grandma here? Patty, I mean."

"Well. She died." Even after all those years, it was still hard to say it. "When I was five. She was drowned by a water demon."

Chris blew out a sad breath through his teeth. "I think she told me about a water demon once. At a summer camp?"

Piper nodded, unable to speak. 

"She's alive, too." Chris's face was sympathetic, if not a little distantly so. "I just saw her a few weeks ago."

Piper's breath felt frozen. "That's - amazing," she managed. "I mean that. I really do."

Chris gave a half-smile, setting his glass down with a quiet 'clink.' He still looked torn between sympathy and a pained grimace. 

She decided to rescue him. "That must be one of the major points of diversion," she said. "My mother's death. Or my grandmother's - how did she pass away in your world?"

"I think it was a heart attack? I don't remember exactly," he said. "They didn't talk about her much."

"It was the same here," Piper explained, "only much later. I was twenty-five."

Chris nodded in silence, taking another drink. His leg was jittering beneath the bar - she could see the way his jacket moved, twitched back and forth with the movement. 

Piper didn't know how to say it gently, so she didn't bother to try. "And your brother? Wyatt?"

Chris set his glass down again, harder than before. "Dead."

"Was he - "

"Yes."

Piper took a deep, shaky breath. Chris's face was closed off again, shut down as it was when he first appeared. "My Wyatt doesn't know," she blurted. "About - about that. Leo and I never told him."

Chris appeared to be struggling for words, one hand clenched into a fist on the surface of the wooden bar. "That seems...ill-advised."

"We never knew how to tell him," Piper confessed. The words came rushing out, then, much more easily than they should have, with this alternate version of her son: but then again, Piper always did talk to Chris a little too freely. It was so easy to forget he was a kid - he had such a way about him, such a firm, empathetic demeanor that it was difficult not to confide in him. Maybe it was partly her fault - Chris's struggle with leaving San Francisco. Maybe she should've treated him more like her son than like her friend. "He knows about the time travel, of course, but when he was little we just used to say it was a 'disaster,' because of course we couldn't explain the whole thing to a seven-year-old, right?" Piper shook her head. "I'm not trying to justify it or anything, but we just kept putting it off, until it got to the point that we didn't know how to explain it without causing this big… _thing,_ and then we figured...why did we have to? We'd changed it, prevented it - so did it even matter?" Piper took another drink. "Stupid. You don't have to tell me."

"Time travel?" Chris repeated, looking lost. "What are you talking about?"

"The - " Piper broke off. "That never happened in your world."

"Obviously not."

She took a deep breath. "Wyatt isn't evil here because Chris - another version of Chris - traveled back in time and changed the future," she said. "That's why my Chris has those visions. His older, future self died in the past, at the same moment that I was giving birth to him in the present. It caused a paradox."

Chris looked faintly perplexed, staring down into his now-empty glass. "So many Chrises," he murmured. "I never did that."

"Clearly - "

"Nobody did that," Chris continued, as if she hadn't tried to interrupt. "We killed him. That's how we stopped him. We had to kill him."

Piper felt faintly ill, looking at the expression on his face. She'd only ever seen that expression on one other person before, and it took her an absurdly long time to recognize it for what it was. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry, Chris."

"Yeah, well." He tipped the glass back, sliding one of the ice cubes into his mouth. Not meeting her eyes, he chewed for a long moment before he said anything else. "If the future version died while trying to save his brother, then it was an act of self-sacrifice. His soul would've been sent to the Whitelighters by default."

"It wasn't," Piper said. She bit her lip. "Leo thinks it's because he was out of his own time. For years we thought maybe his original timeline was preserved - that we created a new branch, instead of truly destroying the original one - and that future version of Chris became a Whitelighter there. But now…"

"You think he's still trapped," Chris concludes, as sharp as her own Chris, but twice as blunt. "You think _that's_ what these visions are. He's got the other Chris's soul inside of him."

"If - if he was," Piper stammered, "then at least he's not...somewhere worse. At least he's still…" _loved,_ she couldn't bear to say. 

This Chris didn't say anything. The silence was a heavy weight between them; the only sound in the room was the gentle clinking of the ice as he tilted his glass, the crunch of his teeth as he bit down on another cube. 

"I'm not sure if that helps our current situation," he finally said. "Did you look at the spell they used? Were they trying to summon me specifically, or was it something else entirely?"

"It was supposed to be a vision quest," Piper said firmly, shaking her head. "That's why Chris was in the summoning circle. PJ wrote her own incantation, and they used the potion and herbs for a traditional meditative vision spell. We still don't know how a portal even opened - nobody here did it on purpose. They were as surprised as you were."

Chris was frowning down at the bartop. "And you believe them?"

"Of _course._ "

He scoffed. "I had to ask," he said. His eyes were shadowed. "If my son pulled something like this, my first thought would be that he was trying to pull one over on me."

"You - you have a - " Piper felt herself hit that invisible brick wall again. "A son?"

His face somehow went soft and angry at the same time. "I have two children. A girl and a boy."

Piper felt her breath leave her body in one swift whoosh, leaving nothing but empty, aching space behind. 

"My wife and I live in Mérida," he continued. "...that's in Mexico."

"I know where it is," she snapped, grabbing her drink and downing the rest in one long gulp.

He was eyeing her warily, when she lowered the highball. "I'm just saying," he said, "that's why I speak Spanish. Are you okay?"

"Is it Bianca?" she blurted. "Your wife."

His face did something strange. "How do you…"

"Some things are universal, I guess," she said, and shook her head. "The future Chris I knew...but it's not important. Please don't tell me anymore." She felt her voice go reedy and thin, as if she were pleading. "It's not that I don't want to know, do you understand? I want to know so bad, but I can't…"

He held up a hand. "Fine." Pushing his glass towards her, he raised an eyebrow. "You got more of that in that shaker?"

Piper refilled both their glasses without another word. Her hand shook, making the metal of the shaker rattle against the lip of the glasses. 

With the same empathy that made her own Chris easy to talk to, this one didn't mention it. He simply drank with her in silence, looking around the interior of her club with vague interest. 

Piper became slowly more and more aware of the physical reality of his presence there: the rustle of his clothes, and the nervous, constant movement of his jittering knee beneath the bar. There was a scar on his cheek, she noticed. His hair seemed thicker. His beard really did suit him - would her own Chris grow a beard, one day? She tried to picture it, but she couldn't. This man seemed like a completely different person. Different even from Future Chris, who she'd loved and grieved for, for almost twenty years now. 

"It is really nice," he said finally. "You make good money?"

"Good enough," Piper said, her voice hoarse. 

"I'd imagine so. With live music, it'd be easy."

"Why'd your P3 go out of business?" Piper can't help but ask. "I thought about selling a few times. When the kids were young, it got really difficult. But…" _My last link to Prue,_ was the truth. The last holdover from the person she was before her sister died. 

Chris just shrugged. "I never asked," he said. He was wearing a wedding ring, she noticed for the first time. It was made of some sort of stone - black, glinting in the fading sunlight from the skylights. "I should have asked her more questions, probably. But I was too interested in my own life - like most teenagers."

"Ask her when you get back," Piper suggested. 

Chris huffed, his face turning bitter again, and Piper's stomach soured. "Sure," he said.

.

Piper didn't make it home that night. She slept at the club, in the same little room Future Chris once slept in - although the cot has gone through some improvements, in the years since. Leo slept in this room sometimes, during some of their rough patches. He didn't technically need to sleep, being _technically_ not human, but he liked to do it anyway. Piper always suspected it was to make her feel better, more than anything else.

("Tell me, does it bother you that your husband's body is a facsimile, and his true nature is of a soul tethered to this dimension by a heavenly council of angelic beings made of divine intent?" That was Paige. Right after she'd finally gotten around to researching the true nature of Whitelighters, and promptly had a month-long existential crisis that nearly ruined her marriage, among other things.

"No," Piper had said.)

Leo told her once, what the Elders really looked like. Anyone can become one, he said, but once you do you can never really go back. You can give up the responsibility, but your magic doesn't ever change back to what it once was. Angels - real angels, like the Elders were - were inhuman in a way that the mortal brain honestly can't comprehend it - that's why they always looked strange to her, when she saw them in person. When they were looked upon by other beings, they were seen as forms similar to what the observer expected - an old man in weird-looking robes, human-looking, regular eyes and hair and voices. But in reality, that's not what they were at all. 

"When I took you up there - you don't remember," Leo said. "The first time. All those years ago. After you left Dan for me."

"Oh my God, we were so young," Piper murmured. 

"That was the only time they gave you the Sight," Leo continued. "The ability to perceive them on their level - at least to a certain extent."

"Is that why I didn't remember?" Leo nodded. "But you remembered."

"I did," Leo said. "Would you like to know how you reacted?"

"Was it graceful and classy and not embarrassing?" Piper joked. "Because if not, then my answer is no."

"You cried," Leo said gravely, squeezing her hands. "You cried and you turned to me and said that they were the most beautiful things you'd ever seen. And then you fell to your knees and closed your eyes and prayed. I'd never seen you pray before." Leo paused. "Or since."

Piper didn't even know what to say to that. "That doesn't sound very much like me."

"Exactly," Leo replied. "That's the danger of Seeing them - they make you...not yourself. They're not magic, exactly - they're much more. Fallible still, of course, but...divine, even so." He pursed his lips. "Divinity isn't perfect, I think I've learned that by now. It's just a different form of power. But it still...overwhelms you. Makes you do strange things, when you're truly in their presence."

Piper thought of the day the majority of them were slaughtered by the Titans - the morning Leo had orbed down into her arms, covered in blood which she didn't understand at the time was his own. _I'm the only one,_ he'd said, not making any sense at all. _I'm the only one left, it's just me, I'm alone. I'm alone._

"Good thing they're on our side," Piper had said, chilled. "Most of the time."

"Most of the time," Leo agreed. 

Piper never considered herself religious at all, even though she did have...a certain sort of guilt, from a childhood in the company of the Trudeaus. Andy and his parents were Catholic, and traditionally so, and many, many Sunday mornings were spent with them at church - Pheebs had been too young, of course, but Piper and Prue weren't, and Grams would dress them up in their finest dresses and send them off to the neighbor's house to be packed up in the car along with Andy and his brothers, off for a long morning at Mission Dolores. As disdainful as Grams could be about Christainity, she still had no qualms about unloading her grandkids for an entire day every week. Pheebs always went to the other neighbor's - a young college student who babysat for cash - and Grams would spend most of her day "playing cards." (As an adult, Piper suspected that was probably a euphemism for a lot of different things.)

"It's all tripe," Grams would say, but every Sunday Piper found herself back at church, holding hands with Prue in the back pew, muffling their giggles at the boys' antics. Andy was the only serious one of the bunch - solemn even as a little boy, he'd sit next to them and faithfully listen to the sermon, saying the prayers loud enough that they both could hear and follow along with some accuracy. 

His family buried him at a church, when he died. Not Mission Dolores - that graveyard was _extremely_ haunted, the sisters learned, during an unfortunate Samhain outing about twelve years ago - but a nice, traditional Catholic cemetery in Fremont. The Halliwell mausoleum would never have been allowed on holy ground, but a part of Piper wished they could've put Prue closer to him, somehow. They deserved that much of an ending, at least. 

Phoebe kept calling her with increasing frequency until Piper finally turned off her phone, around midnight. Exhausted from the day, still angry deep down in her heart - though at who exactly, she wasn't sure - Piper decided she deserved to say "fuck it."

"Wyatt's worried," was the first thing Leo said, bright and early the next morning. He'd orbed in at dawn and joined her on the tiny cot, wrapping his arms around her, squeezing an apology into her torso. Piper hadn't said a word, and laid there for a dreamy two hours until she started to hear the traffic pick up outside. Then she got up and brewed coffee, waiting for Leo to follow. Which he did, of course. 

" _I'm_ worried," Piper said. "About our other son, who is lost in the freaking multiverse, right now."

"Are you afraid you'll yell at them? Blame them?" Leo asked, and didn't wait for an answer. "Pheebs is with them. And I have some news."

"Let's hear it," Piper said, picking up the small French press and moving over to one of the lounge couches. The one they always used to sit at, when they were young - her and Pheebs and Prue and then Paige, young and dressed up, their hair done as nicely as they knew how. It was the same couch and everything - Piper never threw anything away. 

The Elder Leo knew was called Oriphel, although they usually went by 'Ori.' They'd never been human - they were one of the Ancient Ones, an Elder who had escaped the Titans' slaughter, and many other disasters and threats, before and since. They were also one of the Elders who had argued in favor of Piper and Leo's marriage, all those years ago. 

"Where did they come from, if they were never a human?" Piper asked. 

"I don't know," Leo said. "They're old. Very, very old. Maybe they don't even remember." That was sobering enough to stifle any more questions. 

Ori was a kind being, without gender or much of a physical form, which is how they'd escaped the Titans. Leo said they had advice on the situation, although he had to be in Piper's presence when he remembered it. 

"...remember it?" 

"It's...a thing," Leo said uncomfortably. "They can give you a memory and then lock it up so you can only remember it again with a certain trigger...anyway - "

"Did they do this to us?" Piper demanded. "Oh my God, can _you_ do that, when you have your Elder powers? I swear to God Leo if you messed with my head at _any_ point I'm gonna - "

"Would you calm down? Drink your coffee," Leo said. "I'm like, an Elder but I'm not an Elder like Ori's an Elder. They're like...an _Elder._ " He shifted again, still visibly uncomfortable. "There's a hierarchy."

"How is it that we've been married for two decades and you're still explaining things to me," Piper grumbled. "Okay, what's the trigger?"

"This." Leo held out a white candle. "You just light it."

"Okay." Piper took it from him and placed it carefully on the low table, next to her French press. "Should we...call for backup, lay down a tarp, what?"

Leo snorted. "I'll probably just go into a trance and say some weird stuff."

"Well. That's easily manageable." Piper went over to the bar to dig out one of the lighters from the lost and found - they were always finding them scattered around the club, falling from patrons' pockets. "You sure you don't want to...get ready somehow? Lay down, eat some protein?"

"Would you just do it?" Leo asked, rolling his eyes. But he was smiling, a little. Their fight the day before seemed far, far away. 

Piper took a fortifying sip of coffee, and lit the candle. The change was almost instantaneous - Leo's body language changed, his eyes went startlingly blank. A soft, hazy light descended upon the room, and Piper's own eyelids drooped - as if she were suddenly very tired, or very high, or both. 

PIPER AND LEO HALLIWELL, Leo said. His voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, and Piper dimly noticed that his lips weren't even moving. I OFFER YOU CONDOLENCES ON THE RECENT LOSS OF YOUR SON. HE WAS A POWERFUL BEING OF GOOD IN YOUR WORLD. 

He's not gone, Piper said. Or wanted to say. Somehow. 

NOT COMPLETELY. BUT HE IS FAR FROM OUR CURRENT REACH, Leo said. This seemed more like a conversation, Piper realized suddenly, then a recorded memory of some kind. Was Ori _there?_ Or did it even matter? IT MAY BE POSSIBLE TO RETRIEVE HIM, BUT THE TASK IS DIFFICULT. TEMPER YOUR EXPECTATIONS, DAUGHTER. PREPARE YOURSELF FOR YOUR GRIEF SO THAT IT DOES NOT OVERWHELM YOU.

Fuck you, Piper said. 

NO THANK YOU, Leo replied. Not Leo. _Oriphel_. Piper felt frozen in her seat. She wanted to laugh but she felt like she'd been turned to stone - was this what it felt like for people when she froze time? God, she couldn't even imagine. LEO HAS ASKED ME FOR ADVICE, AND I HAVE SOME TO OFFER. TO FIND YOUR SON, YOU MUST USE THE ONE THAT HAS BEEN BROUGHT HERE. THERE IS A CONNECTION BETWEEN THEM - IT IS THE REASON THE PORTAL CHOSE HIM. IF YOUR CHRIS STILL LIVES, THEN YOU CAN USE THAT CONNECTION TO TRACE HIS JOURNEY. THAT IS, IF THE OTHER ONE IS WILLING.

What does that mean, Piper said. 

IT IS AN ARDUOUS THING TO ASK OF HIM. IT WILL BE PAINFUL. HE WILL HAVE TO SACRIFICE A PIECE OF HIMSELF IN ORDER TO MAKE THE CONNECTION STRONG ENOUGH TO FOLLOW. IT WILL NOT BE EASY. 

You're talking about his soul. You're talking about what happened with my Chris and his future self. 

YES, Ori said. YOU ALREADY KNOW IN YOUR HEART WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR SON THE DAY HE WAS BORN. YOU ALREADY KNOW HOW IT OPENED HIM TO THE UNIVERSE.

Piper thought about the other Chris. An older, weary Chris, who had a wife and children, who spoke Spanish and smiled at her bitterly, like he couldn't even bear to look at her. His mother was alive, but he still talked about her in the past tense. The way he said "my son" made Piper feel like she wanted to die, there was so much protective, desperate fierceness in it. 

HE MAY BE WILLING. BUT IT WILL TAKE MUCH OF HIS STRENGTH. AND YOUR SON HAS TO BE WILLING TOO. 

Piper wanted to die right then and there, actually. She wanted to just die, instead of listening to this. This undeniable voice. 

I WISH I HAD BETTER NEWS FOR YOU. BUT A PORTAL WAS OPENED, AND THERE IS ONLY ONE WAY FOR THAT TO HAVE HAPPENED, Ori continued. She could still _see_ Leo, but his face seemed warped - distorted through a mirror. HE IS A STRONG YOUNG MAN, BUT HE HAS LIED TO YOU HIS ENTIRE LIFE. YOU KNOW THIS TO BE TRUE. YOU DID NOT WANT TO LOOK, BUT YOUR EYES CAN REMAIN CLOSED NO LONGER. 

No, Piper said. No. 

TO FIND YOUR SON AGAIN, YOU MUST KNOW HIM, Ori said. FOLLOW THE PATH HE TOOK, AND THERE YOU WILL FIND HIS TRUTH. UNTIL YOU DO THIS, THERE IS NO HOPE.

I know my son. I know my son. 

YOU DO NOT, and somehow the voice _felt_ gentle. Like a warm hand against Piper's back. YOU DID NOT SEE HIS PAIN. YOU DID NOT SEE BECAUSE YOU WISHED FOR IT NOT TO EXIST. WE CAN MAKE OURSELVES BELIEVE ANYTHING, IF WE LOVE STRONGLY ENOUGH. THIS IS THE WEAKNESS OF A HUMAN HEART. 

Piper could feel the presence retreating, the haze lifting slightly as Ori left - faded away, back into the candle, or whatever the fuck it was they lived. Her breath was coming in short, huffing breaths, and she realized with a dim clarity that she was also crying. 

GOOD LUCK, DAUGHTER. CALL UPON ME AGAIN IF YOU WISH. Leo's body shivered violently - Piper could feel his knees shaking, pressed against her own on the couch - and the haze lifted then completely. The candle snuffed itself out, leaving them in semi-darkness, a thin trail of smoke winding its way up from the wick. 

Leo blinked, and then his face crumpled. Piper became aware that her phone was ringing shrilly, rattling against the table. 

"Sweetheart," Leo said, reaching out. Piper batted his arms away with a gasp, a horrible sob ripping out of her throat.

"I have to get that," she said, fumbling for the phone. Leo put his hand on her back instead, and the other one rose to cover his face. Hunched over on the couch like that, he looked older than he'd ever been. "I have to get this. It's Phoebe. She might have some - the kids are - " Piper's fingers shook as she swiped to answer the call. "Hello? Pheebs?"

"Piper," Phoebe said. Her voice was shaky, in clear distress. In the background someone was yelling, but Piper couldn't make out any words. "Thank God, I was so worried, are you okay? Where are you?"

"The club," Piper said. She looked over at Leo, whose shoulders were trembling. 

"Why are you at the club? Never mind, you need to get back here," Phoebe said. 

"Tell me." Piper cleared her throat. "Tell me what it is."

"Sweetie - "

"You tell me right now!"

Phoebe paused. "Oh, Piper," she said finally, her voice clogged with tears. "Oh, honey. We found a note. From Chris."

Piper's world narrowed down to a very small, fixed point: Leo's hand on her back, clenching and unclenching rhythmically, like he was trying to keep from forming a fist. "What kind of note?"

Phoebe sniffled loudly. "Just come home," she said, warbly and soft, "just come home. We need you here, Piper."

 _No_ , Piper thought.


	2. Chapter 2

_Let them fight - Daddy would._

_**Generation Hex** _

.

Wyatt was an idiot; he had accepted this about himself a long time ago. When he was nine years old, he stuck a fork in a power outlet just to see what would happen and almost killed himself. He vaguely remembers a sudden flash of pain, and then this mother yelling in angry fear, scooping him up off the floor into her arms, yelling his father's name so loud it made his little ears ring. 

When he was fourteen, he was playing Suicide Mountain, which was a terrible, really crassly-named game that he and PJ made up where they jumped off the roof and orbed away right before they hit the ground. The game part was that whoever got close enough to the ground before orbing (or beaming, in PJ's case) won, so it was sort of like chicken only much stupider. Wyatt was the undefeated champion, but PJ was edging up on his record so he pushed his limits a little and ended up slamming into the railing on the deck (he'd misjudged). He almost died; if Chris hadn't been in the house at the time to hear PJ's screams, he probably would have.

When he was eighteen, he almost got a girl pregnant - by which he means Alma definitely thought she was pregnant for about a week before she got one of those blood tests done at her doctor's office. Wyatt didn't even _like_ Alma that much - well, he liked parts of her - but he wasn't about to just abandon her to her fate, so he paced the floor in Chris's bedroom for three sleepless nights, trying to work out how to tell their parents, what he should do about money, if they should get married - the whole nine yards. Chris listened patiently, a carefully blank look on his face the whole time, and then succinctly told Wyatt that he had a final in the morning, so if he could put the existential crisis on hold for about twelve hours that'd be great, and also you don't even know for sure if she's really knocked up or not bro, Jesus.

He didn't mean to get into trouble, but it just seemed to happen naturally. After the fact he always looked back at what he'd done and thought, _wow that was dumb._ But his self-awareness seemed to be retrospective only; no matter how many times he promised himself he would be smarter and more responsible and (more like Chris) a better person generally - he always seemed to end up in the same place. 

Chris used to drive him crazy, the way he was just good at everything. A good student, a good brother, a good neighbor. The only area of his life that he seemed to share Wyatt's disaster DNA in was girls, but Wyatt didn't really think that counted, since Chris just seemed to be doing what every other boy their age was doing. If it ever occurred to Wyatt to resent his brother for any of that, though, he quickly gave up on the urge. Wyatt knew he was kind of a dumbass, but it didn't bother him. He'd get better one day, and besides, it was part of what made him fun and cool and interesting - good stories, a sense of humor. Bravery and bravado was important when you've got the legacy of one of the most powerful lines of magicals who ever lived resting on your shoulders. 

But it never occurred to him that it would bother Chris. Maybe it should have. But his wisdom is always retrospective. 

"Here," said Chris. The other Chris. Wyatt didn't like this one as much; he was mean to PJ and it was frankly kind of weird the way he refused to even be in the same room as their dad. Not that Leo was this Chris's dad, but he liked Piper well enough so clearly there was some bias happening there.

He didn't seem to like Wyatt much either, but Wyatt wasn't taking it personally. "I think you're right. I recognize this from a picture he texted me."

Chris didn't reply. Amherst's campus was in full-swing for the new semester - students milling around everywhere, carrying backpacks and vape pens and chattering loudly as they walked. There wasn't much hope at all that Wyatt and his extra-dimensional brother would _blend in,_ but they'd made the effort to anyway: Wyatt was wearing what he hoped was a normal-enough looking student-like outfit, and Chris had toned down the scary apocalypse vibe for the occasion. He'd even shaved. 

The dorm where his brother had stayed a few months back for his orientation was, of course, a working dorm. Their theory was that it'd be weirder to orb in and poke around at night, when there'd be a bunch of kids sleeping in it - at least during the day, most of them would be in class, right? Or that was the idea, anyway. Looking around at the sheer number of college students there were, every direction he looked, Wyatt was losing hope. 

Chris on the other hand, didn't seem to give much of a shit one way or the other. Striding up to the door, he waved his hand over the lock and the door swung open. "Do you know which room he stayed in?"

"Are you - seriously?" Wyatt said, looking around frantically. "Anybody could've seen you! We have a _key,_ you know - "

"I'm sorry, do you want me to close it again so you can open it yourself?" Chris asked, rolling his eyes. He swung the door open wider with his foot and stepped inside. "Come on. You're the one making a scene now."

Wyatt huffed and followed him in. 

There were less students inside, although they still seemed to be everywhere - sort of like ants. Wyatt stiffened a little when a girl gave them a weird look as they passed each other in the corridor, craning her neck to look at them over her shoulder as she turned the corner. 

"Relax," Chris said, walking with confidence, although Wyatt knew he didn't know where he was going. "You're making it weird by being weird."

"We're two grown men in a college dorm - a _girl's_ dorm?" Wyatt asked, noting with alarm the gender of the name labels on the doors. "I mean, I know I'm sufficiently college aged but you _definitely_ look like a thirtysomething weirdo - "

"It's a unisex building, they just split up genders by floor," Chris said. 

" _How_ on earth do you know that?"

"It said it on the pamphlet we found in Chris's room," Chris said, like it was obvious. He stopped at another door, which seemed to lead to a stairwell. "Come on. Boys' rooms are on the second floor. And stop looking around like that, you're gonna freak everyone out."

"I am so not the weird looking one," Wyatt hissed. 

"You are," Chris replied calmly, leading him up the set of concrete stairs. He threw a derisive look at Wyatt over his shoulder. "If you act like you're supposed to be there, nobody's gonna question it. How do you not know this already?"

"Sorry, I don't come from a vague apocalypse world where we had to break and enter on a regular basis," Wyatt said with a sneer. 

"I've told you before, there was no apocalypse," Chris said testily. "I was working when you guys yanked me here, that's why I was wearing old clothes. Get over it already."

"Whatever you say, man," Wyatt said. 

The second floor was much emptier, though there were a few kids studying in a small common room right off the stairwell. Wyatt steeled his shoulders and tried to act like he was supposed to be there, which he was marginally certain worked, a little. 

"I don't know which room he was in," Wyatt said, as Chris led them to a small kitchenette at the end of the hallway. It seemed to be shared between half a dozen people, judging by the rows and rows of labeled condiments in the cupboard, which was sitting wide open, missing a door. There was a small window and a fridge, a huge microwave, and more cabinets, but other than that - nothing particularly illuminating. Chris seemed interested anyway - poking around, opening the fridge and the drawers, his eyebrows pulled together in concentration. "I'm not even sure what we're doing here, I mean - what is this going to tell us, anyway? Like, wow, he slept in this building for a few days. He wouldn't have left anything behind, and definitely not anything important."

"Oriphel told us to follow his path," Chris said, "so we're following his path."

"Like, literally? Aren't the really old Elders sort of, you know, esoteric in their advice?"

"Wyatt, I'm so impressed you used that word correctly," Chris said with a smirk. Wyatt shot him a dirty look. "In my experience, it's best to take it literally, when an Ancient Elder tells you to do something. The reason usually becomes clear fairly quickly, and it's almost never what you think it's going to be."

"You knew a lot of those old guys in your world then?" Wyatt asked. Chris had turned away to start poking again, rummaging through a silverware drawer that seemed to contain more discarded beer bottle caps than actual kitchen utensils. 

"One or two. Oriphel is one of the oldest, I've never dealt with them in particular. But it was a rare privilege to have a conference with an Ancient One, so I never turned it down."

Wyatt frowned. Half the time Chris seemed like he'd come from a barren wasteland of a universe - he obviously hadn't spent any significant time with his family in years, judging by how awkward he was around Phoebe and Paige, and how few answers he had to some of their questions. How was it that he didn't _know_ whether or not his Phoebe was married or not? That wasn't something you just forgot. 

Everyone's theories differed slightly - Wyatt tended to err on the side of cynicism, lately. He already knew his alternate self was dead - the beans were spilled on that pretty quick. His best working theory so far was that a lot of them were dead, actually, and Chris was trying to be like, nice or whatever by not telling them. 

Then again. "Aunt Prue always had a real rapport with one called Harufel though," Chris said. "She would always grease the wheels for me whenever she could."

"Was she...close with the Elders? Prue, I mean?"

Chris narrowed one eye, like he could hear the desperate curiosity behind the question. (He probably could.) "I wouldn't say they get along, but Prue's good at getting things done," Chris said cryptically. "Come on. See if you can come up with a spell to figure out where his bedroom is."

"What, just like that? Why don't you do it?"

"He's your brother," Chris said, just this side of accusatory. "Your magic is connected. Use it."

Wyatt bit back another snappy reply, mostly because he was right. "I'm a shit rhymer."

"I'll help. But the idea has to come from you."

"Fine." Wyatt closed his eyes to think - and to block out the other Chris's face, which was still hard to look at. "Halliwell...Halliwell clan? Halliwell link - "

"That's good, use words of communion," Chris said. 

"Halliwell link, Halliwell...kitchen sink," Wyatt said, opening one eye. "That's probably not what you mean."

Chris sighed the sigh of the long suffering. "You can rhyme every other phrase. 'Halliwell clan, Halliwell link…'" He made an encouraging motion with one hand. 

"Halliwell clan, Halliwell link, show me the...floor plan, where…" Wyatt squeezed his eyes shut again, "my brother went to think?"

Chris snorted, but the air between them shimmered, and the little window suddenly fogged up with condensation. A map appeared in the fog, drawn by an invisible hand, and Wyatt whooped quietly.

"See?" Chris said smugly, squinting at it. "Looks like he was in the third room on the west side."

"I still don't know what this is going to accomplish," Wyatt said, following Chris out of the kitchenette. "Chris wouldn't have left us anything here - "

"Not on purpose, maybe," Chris said, "but would you rather go back to San Francisco?"

Wyatt's throat closed up. His mother hadn't left her room in weeks, and Phoebe was focused completely on PJ, who was taking it similarly hard. There was always his dad, who seemed to want to spend as much time as possible with Wyatt to overcompensate for how Mom didn't really want to see either of them, but at the current moment, Wyatt didn't want to be anywhere near the house his brother disappeared in. 

He still didn't understand - maybe he never would. Chris's note certainly didn't explain much, and he hadn't said a word. That was the part that hurt the most - that Chris had pretended everything was _normal,_ and that he'd used a spell by Wyatt and PJ to do this. 

(Whatever it was he was trying to do.)

"No," Wyatt said. "I think it's this one."

Chris paused at the third door. "Yeah."

"What if there's someone living in it?"

The hallway was empty, but Wyatt's shoulders still tensed up as Chris waved his hand over the lock in a similar move from before, the door swinging open gently beneath the push of telekinesis. "Hello?" Chris called cautiously, "this is Student Services. Is this Jimmy Anderson's room?"

"Jimmy Anderson?" Wyatt whispered incredulously. 

Chris shot him a dirty look. "Hello, we're looking for Jimmy…?" He poked his head in, and then swung the door open the rest of the way. "Nobody's here."

Wyatt pushed him inside quickly, itchy now that they were so close and nothing had gone wrong yet. Shutting the door behind him, he surveyed the room: a typical kid's dorm room. Messy bunk beds, books and clothes strewn about everywhere. Rock band posters on the wall, held in place by thumbtacks. "Now what?"

"Now, we poke around," Chris said, demonstrating the verb on Wyatt's shoulder. "Keep your mind open, kid."

"Not a kid," Wyatt grumbled, but Chris had already turned away. 

Wrinkling his nose, Wyatt grimly started to sort through the detritus in the open dresser drawers - most of it seemed to be a mix of laundry both dirty and clean. Clearing his throat, he shot a look at Chris over his shoulder, who was examining the textbooks on the desk. "Did you tell my mom that Prue's alive in your universe?"

Chris didn't even flinch. "Yes. It was fairly hard to keep it from her when she realized I had no idea who Paige was."

"How'd she react?"

"Not well." Chris turned and arched an eyebrow at him. "Your mom's been through a lot the last couple months, Wyatt."

"I know that," Wyatt said, hearing it come out defensive. He frowned and turned with determination back to the dresser. "You're not even from here. You don't get to lecture me about my family."

"Well, you've all been avoiding her," Chris said, his own frustration clear in his tone. "Letting her sink into her grief up in that bedroom."

"That's what she asked us to do!"

"And she's been in her right mind?" Chris asked. He didn't wait for an answer. "Come look at this."

Wyatt turned, his chest still burning with a low-level anger, to find the desk cleared of its contents - pushed aside into one corner. There in the wood was a faint, oily outline, in the familiar shape of an oblong circle. "Is that - "

"Holy oil," Chris said, rubbing it with one thumb. "It leaves an imprint on the surface you use when you use it for magic."

"He did a spell here?"

Chris was quiet for a moment, hesitating. "On the day it...the day of," he said, "Wyatt, did you see him do anything to the circle? Change any of the ingredients or candles?"

"No," Wyatt bit out, "we've been over this. Whatever he did to change the spell, neither PJ or I caught it."

"Holy oil," Chris muttered, frowning to himself. "Was he trying to summon a ghost? Why would he use it for his base?"

Wyatt waited for Chris to continue, but he just kept frowning at nothing, caught in deep thought. "Is there a way to figure out what spell he did here?"

"I don't think so. Unless you know something I don't." 

"But you think he tried it here," Wyatt said, feeling sick. "He tried to do it on his own first, and...it didn't work or something. That's why he needed me and PJ's juice."

"I don't think he planned it," Chris said, slow and careful. He turned slightly so that he was facing Wyatt, reaching out tentatively to touch Wyatt's shoulder. It looked like it was as painful for him as it felt to Wyatt. "We've gone over and over his behavior in the weeks leading up to what happened, everyone agrees that he wasn't acting out of character at all. Even leaving his orientation early had a good explanation. He was actively planning for school, he didn't display any of the typical behaviors one does when they're planning to…"

"Kill themselves?" Wyatt finished, and shook off Chris's hand. "That's because he wasn't. Trying to do that, I mean. There's something we're missing, some _reason_ why he wanted to go to your world."

"That's just it, Wyatt, I don't think it was my world he was trying for," Chris said, spreading out his palms. "He wasn't having visions of my life - we've already compared the details. I mean, maybe he was seeing some of it here and there, but from what it sounds like, Chris was having visions of timelines that were much closer to this one than mine ever was. And this holy oil…" Chris shook his head. "I think it was impulsive. I think he saw a chance, had an idea, and jumped at it, and that's why he misfired. He got me instead, when he was trying for...someone more specific."

"The timeline that got destroyed?" Wyatt asked. "That's the one he was having the _most_ visions of."

"Maybe." Chris sighed. "I don't know. I'm just guessing."

Wyatt stared at the oily residue on the desk, his heart pounding a little. Must be hella annoying for whoever was living here, he thought. It probably got their notebooks all greasy, and they probably couldn't figure why it wouldn't disappear, no matter how many times they tried to clean it. 

"What's holy oil used for? Summoning ghosts?"

"Summoning saints," Chris corrected. "Or." He swallowed. "A soulmate."

Wyatt's heart jolted. "Are you serious?"

Chris considered him for a second. "I think we've found all we can here," he said. "Let's get out of here before someone comes back."

"No, no - explain about soulmates first. Come on." Wyatt laughed a little. "Chris never dated anyone longer than a week, and even that was rare. He didn't have a _soulmate._ "

"I'll explain somewhere else," Chris said, his tone booking no room for argument. He clapped his hand back on Wyatt's shoulder, and orbed them out before he could say anything else. The room dissolved into blue light, and Wyatt let himself be led - he was probably too upset to orb himself, anyway. 

This other Chris was annoying like that - taking charge like his dad usually would. Or did, before...this all happened. This Chris had children, Wyatt knew that, but it was weird to think about any version of Chris as a dad, so Wyatt just didn't. 

Not that Chris wouldn't be good at it. But somehow Wyatt never expected it to happen. Or maybe he just never...thought about it. There were a lot of things, Wyatt was starting to realize, that he'd never thought about. 

.

They reappeared in a cemetery - or outside the front gate of one, rather. He stumbled back a few steps though, and shot Chris a dirty look. Whatever the fuck was different about orbing in that other universe - it gave Wyatt a headache. 

"Rude," he said, readjusting his jacket. 

Chris didn't reply, staring apprehensively at the graveyard, which was enclosed behind an ancient-looking iron gate. Wyatt frowned and followed his gaze, but he didn't see anything that caught his attention - just another one of those old cemeteries, full of weak, crumbling headstones. Just another graveyard, in a world full of them. 

"What are we doing here?" Wyatt looked around. "Where _is_ here, by the way?"

"We're still in Amherst," Chris said. He glanced up at the sky. "This is Amherst West Cemetery. Emily Dickinson is buried here."

"O...kay?" Wyatt blinked at him. "Now comes the part when you explain, right?"

"It's my wife's ancestral burial ground," Chris said. Wyatt's mouth snapped shut in surprise. "Her name is Bianca Rosado; she's a Phoenix from the Mitchell clan. They're descended from Mary Bradbury, who was the only actual witch to be accused during the Salem Witch Trials. She was also the only one who escaped custody." Chris rubbed his jaw. "The rest were either pardoned, or executed."

"And you think she's your soulmate?" Wyatt asked. 

"It's not a romantic term, it's a magical one," Chris said, turning on one heel. "Bianca and I are tethered together. It doesn't mean we're necessarily destined for each other, it just means that our life forces are aligned. It's why my children's magic is so volatile."

It made Wyatt's throat hurt, to hear the naked longing in Chris's voice. "Your kids have magic issues?"

"Matías can barely control it at all," Chris said, turning away again. His voice still hurt to hear. "We had to put a light binding on his powers so he wouldn't hurt himself - Prue was trying to help us figure out a more long term solution. And my little girl, Nellie…" Chris didn't finish the sentence. 

Wyatt felt like he was treading on very delicate ground - like one wrong word would send him crashing through the ice. "You think Bianca has something to do with my Chris."

"I think if he was seeing visions of all kinds of different worlds and timelines, then Bianca featured fairly heavily, yes." Chris seemed to be steeling himself for something. "That he chose Amherst of all places can't be a coincidence. This is where she grew up." He turned back to Wyatt. "Her mother, her grandmothers, her aunts - they're all buried right here. And we're not even a mile away from the dorm your brother was sleeping in."

"Why didn't he say anything?" Wyatt asked, not really expecting an answer. "Was he...looking for her?"

Chris didn't reply. He simply walked away, forward into the cemetery. Wyatt bit back an annoyed sigh, and followed. 

The graveyard was larger than it looked from outside the gate, and neatly laid out in rows. Most of the headstones appeared to be fairly old - there were no new ones that Wyatt could see. The dates he glimpsed as they walked were all from the 1900s.

"Emily Dickinson, huh?" Wyatt asked. 

"She's on the other side," Chris said. He seemed to know exactly where he was going, ignoring the lane altogether and walking between the rows with purpose. Wyatt had to jog a little to keep up. "Bianca's family is in the oldest part. It's invisible to mortals."

"Of course it is." Something occurred to Wyatt suddenly. "Hey, aren't Phoenixes demons?"

Chris shot him a withering look and didn't reply. 

As they passed through into what was clearly the oldest part of the graveyard - marked by a stone sign that read, FOUNDED 1730, a chilly barrier seemed to descend from the air above. The sun was out, and the weather was clear and warm, but the deeper they went into the old graves, the colder the air became, until Wyatt was physically shivering. 

"A spell to ward off curious mortals," Chris explained, walking a little faster. "It'll get better once we get through."

"Get through what?" Wyatt asked, but as soon as he said it, he felt it: an invisible _push_ , a wave of pressure that ruffled his hair and made him shiver violently. A bone deep shiver - much more than physical cold. "H-holy shit."

"They don't fuck around." Chris grabbed Wyatt's elbow in a supportive gesture which seemed to be almost instinctual - one of those fatherly things that he was always doing, and never seemed to notice. "Come on. They're over here."

Wyatt figured he knew what Chris was going to look for, but it was still hard to watch - the way he scanned each name with a tight gaze, his shoulders getting tenser and tenser as they moved down the line. Wyatt walked behind him in silent support, figuring it was the least he could do - reading the names silently to himself. There didn't seem to be any organization as far as time period, and so the dates were as diverse as the names were: _Hortensia Bradbury, 1799. Jonah & Sarah Anne Moody, 1933. Aphra Maria Stanyan, 1845. Mercy Mitchell, 1988._

Chris stopped short at another name: _Lynn Abitha Mitchell, 1999._ Next to it, was another grave, that was tinted sort of purple, and had embellishments of flowers along the edge. _Bianca Cornelia Rosado, 2012._

Chris sank to his knees on the wet earth, and Wyatt bit his lip, not knowing what to say. He settled for not saying anything, and stood there in what he hoped was respectful silence as Chris gently touched the etched letters, his face etched in sadness. 

"Oh, sweetheart," he said softly, withdrawing his hand. But when he looked back up at Wyatt, his eyes were dry. "Your brother was here. He found her."

"You can tell?"

Chris nodded, and rose to his feet again. He waved at the ground, and Wyatt's stomach dropped at the sight directly in front of Bianca's headstone: an oblong circle burned into the grass, very obviously the remnants of spellwork. 

"What in the hell was he trying to do?!" Wyatt asked, appalled. 

"I don't know," Chris said grimly. "But judging by his note, he clearly didn't think any of you would understand."

Wyatt had to turn away so that he wouldn't punch him in the face. Partly because it was totally disrespectful to sucker punch a guy while he was standing over his wife's alternate universe grave, but also because he was right.

"Was he trying to summon her spirit?" Wyatt asked, forcing his voice not to shake. "Or...something else?"

"Both? Either," Chris said. "That he used holy oil means that he knew who she was, and what they were to each other. Or would've been," he finished sadly. "Maybe he was trying to summon her from one of those worlds he was seeing. I'm sure he saw visions of her in pain...Bianca's past is complicated. She didn't have an easy time when she was young. He seems like the type of kid who would try to do something."

It did sound like Chris. He didn't talk about what he saw, ever, and Wyatt figured it was probably because of whatever super big top secret their parents were keeping about that bad future that got destroyed. If there was a girl...if there was _the_ girl involved, and part of why the visions bothered him so much was because he had to watch her shitty, painful lives without being able to do anything...yeah, Wyatt could see it. 

"I think," Wyatt said, the headstone of _Henry True, 1759_ blurring before his eyes, "I've had enough sleuthing for today. Are you hungry?"

As close to sympathetic as Wyatt had seen him yet, Chris brushed the grave dirt from his hands and nodded. 

"Starving," he said. 

.

Chris's note, if you could call it that considering it was more like a few scrawled sentences that seemed to be directed more at himself than anyone else, was on the top of a fresh page at the back of his spell journal. Phoebe had found it and had a vision, triggered by the touch of that very page, of Chris sitting there in that chair in his room, transcribing something from an ancient-looking text.

The note read: _Would you really leave me alone here? After everything? I won't do it. I refuse._

Below that, was a half-finished list for what was obviously a portal spell - the one he'd been perfecting in Amherst, Wyatt knew now - and then, below that: _I'm so sorry, Mom._

And that was it. Wyatt had scoured the entire journal, back to front, for something else - _anything_ else, but there was nothing. Every other entry was absolutely ordinary - shopping lists, spell drafts. Nothing else even remotely personal at all. 

Wyatt had gone over and over it in his head, a million different times, in the two months since it happened. He still couldn't make sense of it. The ashamed thought he couldn't get rid of: _why didn't he talk to me about it?_ But then again, Wyatt already knew the answer to that one. 

"Were you close to your Wyatt?" Chris startled at the question, setting his coffee cup down with an abrupt click. They were in a diner close to the campus; Chris seemed eerily familiar with this area - he led Wyatt around with absurd confidence. But then again, that's how this Chris seemed to do everything. "I already know he's dead. You guys aren't subtle."

A complicated thing happened to Chris's face. "I...it's been a long time since he passed away."

"So no?" Wyatt shrugged. "Figured."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"You have the, uh, _vibe_ of an only child," Wyatt said, gesturing with a French fry. "How'd it happen? Demon? Warlock? Suicide Mountain?"

"What the fuck is 'Suicide Mountain?' You know what - don't tell me." Chris shook his head. "It's a complicated story, and your mother would probably vanquish me if I told you the details."

Wyatt scowled. "I'm not a kid. You're only older than me because you're from another universe, you know. In reality we're almost the same age. And don't you think I of all people deserve to know?"

"It's not my story to tell," Chris said absurdly, hiding his expression in his coffee cup. Wyatt rolled his eyes. "You and your Chris were close, then?"

"Not that close," Wyatt muttered, "apparently."

"You shouldn't take it personally."

"Oh really? I shouldn't?" Wyatt scoffed. "You've got one hell of a nerve, you know."

"Runs in the family," Chris said, just as their waitress approached with the bill. Chris snatched it up before Wyatt could even make a move. "Don't worry about it. My treat."

" _Where_ are you getting your money?" Wyatt asked incredulously, as Chris pulled two battered twenties out of his jeans pocket. "Is it illegal? Please tell me it's not illegal."

"Not technically, no," Chris said. "Best not to ask."

"Jesus. You really are _nothing_ like my brother."

That seemed to hit home, for whatever reason. Chris's shoulders stiffened. "Clearly," he said, then seemed to think better of continuing that thought. He turned his face away, towards the window. "Look, you can leave if you want. We found what we came here to find. You should be the one to tell your family; it'll hit better from you than from me."

Wyatt certainly wasn't looking forward to that conversation. "You and my mom get along fine," he said. Truthfully, the alternate Chris seemed to be the only person Mom seemed to genuinely want to spend time with lately. "I was planning on just telling my dad, and then let him fill the others in. No matter how gently I put it, it's gonna turn into a big fight."

"Paige and Phoebe do seem a bit...combative here," Chris said delicately. 

"You don't even know Paige."

Chris shrugged. He'd picked at his food more than he'd eaten it, and he finally pushed it away, nudging it towards the edge of the table next to the bill. "I knew the Charmed Ones had a backup sister. My mom and her sisters found out about it years ago. They never reached out, though. And they never said much about it to us."

"That's cold, man. 'Backup sister'?"

"Was that not what she was?" Chris asked, unapologetic. Wyatt wrinkled his nose. "You know, for all their proselytizing, the Elders can be pretty pragmatic. I have no doubt that they had a backup plan in place if you'd lost someone else, too."

Wyatt has a vision of a dozen or so secret siblings, hidden away in the mortal world, perpetually on deck should another tragedy befall the Halliwells. He shuddered. "Pretty sure Grandma stopped at four, but - "

"I'm kidding," Chris said. "Mostly."

"What was it like growing up with Prue?"

Chris shrugged. "What was it like growing up with Paige?"

"Fun." Wyatt pushed his own plate away, the greasy food roiling unpleasantly in his stomach. "She was the fun aunt. Always taking us on trips and stuff. And Henry's pretty cool too. Taught us hand to hand, how to shoot a gun. He speaks Russian, you know - Chris wanted to learn." Wyatt's mood soured once more. 

Chris's eyebrows were arched slightly - though in curiosity or disdain, Wyatt couldn't tell. This version of him was very hard to read. "I never had a 'fun' aunt," he said neutrally. Then he shook his head. "Prue and I are close. It's hard to describe her - she's...a very dynamic person."

"So she's still alive then?" Wyatt challenged. 

"My whole family is alive," Chris said.

"Except for me."

"Except for you," Chris echoed, and drained the rest of his coffee. 

Wyatt didn't feel any particular kind of way about his alternate self being dead, but there was something...absent in the way Chris talked about it that creeped him out, just a little. "So what _is_ the deal, then? You're not close with everyone else?" A thought occurred to Wyatt. "Is it because you married Bianca? Phoenixes _are_ demons. I remember that now - assassins, right?"

Chris looked irritated. "It's much more complicated than that," he said, sounding annoyed. "And no. It's not because of Bianca."

"Then _what?_ "

Chris was quiet for a long moment, clearly weighing how much to say. Wyatt folded his arms, raised his eyebrows, and waited. 

"When my Wyatt died," Chris began, "a lot of us...blamed each other. They blamed Prue and I, to be specific." He sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "It was partly my fault - how it got away from us, turned into this big schism in the family. I was younger then, very angry. Grieving. Bianca and I had just eloped, which didn't help. So I didn't even try to fix it. We just...packed our bags and left. And we haven't looked back since." _Until now,_ seemed to be the silent end of the sentiment, judging by the look on his face. 

Wyatt turned this over in his head, considering. "Was it an accident?"

"No."

"A demon attack then? Something similar?" Wyatt frowned hard, down at the tabletop. "Never mind. That's not the real question I wanted to ask."

"Oh?" Chris tilted his head. "Well - I'm all ears, kid. Ask."

Now that the opportunity is presented to him, though - Wyatt found that he couldn't even get the words out. He stared at Chris for a second, floundering in silence.

Chris took pity on him. "I think he's probably in my world," he said. "That's how portals like these work. Unless he found a way to open another one and keep jumping, then that's almost definitely where he is." 

Wyatt tried to picture it: _his_ Chris, quiet and solemn and intense, kind to the point of self-sacrifice, in the world that this Chris described. Was he trying to fix it, get home? Or was he simply...enjoying it, a world where his dream girl was alive?

It's not like he could like, take this Chris's place, or anything. For fuck's sake, the guy was almost fifteen years older, which meant Bianca was older, too. And there were kids...Wyatt's heart froze, trying to picture his Chris as a dad. Finally daring to think about the details. He'd be _so_ fucking good at it. 

"My house," Chris said, "is in a very large city. But it's private, big enough for all of us to have extra space, and it has a garden. We make good money, Bianca and I." He squinted slightly, and Wyatt was struck again by the gauntness of his face - the abrupt, cool demeanor he affected constantly. "Prue lives with us. Matías and Nellie have a magic tutor who comes three times a week, and they go to a mortal school the other two. Bianca has two aunts who live close by who come over quite a lot too - Elisabete and Floriana Rosado. Related on her father's side," Chris clarified, "so they're not Phoenixes. Totally mortal, actually, although Floriana does dabble in palm reading." He smiled, privately. 

Wyatt realized all of a sudden that he was holding his breath. "Th - that sounds nice."

"It is nice. I have a good life," Chris said. "I'm very lucky. Incredibly blessed, actually. I'm not a good person, Wyatt." Wyatt blinked at him, taken aback by the abruptness, but Chris's tone and demeanor hadn't changed - he still seemed fond, his eyes much softer than they were normally. "Not like your brother is. I don't...do nice things, and if I told you the whole story behind why my parents disowned me, then you wouldn't like me very much either. You certainly wouldn't trust me enough to walk alone into a graveyard with me."

"They must miss you," Wyatt said gravely, pointedly ignoring the last half of that ugly thought. 

"I'm sure they do. I miss them." Chris cleared his throat. "I've never been away from them this long...my kids, I mean."

Wyatt nodded again, not trusting himself to speak. 

"Anyway. The room they'd give your brother is on the top floor - we use it for guests. Floriana loves to sleep there whenever she stays over - she's a painter, and it's got a great view of the sunrise in the mornings." Chris smiles to himself. "Prue works as a photographer in the city; she'd show him all the spots the tourists miss. She knows all the most beautiful places. And Bianca loves to cook. Morning, day, night - that's all she'd ever do, if she could get away with it. She'd take it personally if Chris wasn't getting spoiled at every meal."

Wyatt, to his horror, found himself tearing up a little, just picturing it. 

"Nellie's younger, they'd probably keep him away from her at first. She's...sensitive," Chris said, his gaze faraway. Locked on another universe. "She'd adjust quickly though, she always does. She and Matías are yin and yang - complementary, you know. And they like to gang up on people." A pained grin. "Before they got too old and cool for it, they'd sneak into our bedroom all the time to surprise us in the morning. We'd try everything to keep them out - spells, wards, padlocks, whatever - but they always found a way in. They liked to wake us up by jumping on us." He grinned. "They weren't nice about it, either."

"They sound beautiful," Wyatt said, through a scratchy throat. "Absolutely beautiful."

Chris didn't acknowledge that - if he even heard it. "Matías is twelve. Old enough to understand. Old beyond his years. Both of them are," he continued, the longing obvious in his voice now, "they'd help your Chris adjust. He's got that kindness, you know." He gestured with one hand, which shook a little as he retreated, folding it with the other on top of the table. "That selflessness you all have here. My son has that."

"Runs in the family," Wyatt choked out. Chris nodded, and they fell into a tight silence as the waitress returned for the bill. 

Wyatt had never been to Mexico, but he tried to picture it anyway: Chris, in a top floor bedroom, watching an orange sunrise every morning. Coffee and eggs in a tiled kitchen. He'd still have aunts, even if they weren't the same ones he knew. And there'd be that girl he'd been dreaming of: grown up, happy, settled into a colorful, exciting life. Children that looked like him. A complicated future, but still a happy ending regardless. Was that what he'd been looking for? Is that what he needed so badly to see?

"It was probably my fault," Wyatt blurted, after the waitress had gone again. 

Chris cocked his head. "What was?"

Wyatt gestured vaguely. "I'm kind of an idiot," he said, in lieu of an actual explanation.

Chris looked confused for a second, but then his face cleared into a miraculous smile. "Yeah, but you wear it well."

"Thanks," Wyatt said. 

.

Wyatt was staying with Paige and Henry, at the moment, since his parents needed all the space they could get, and PJ was still in an angry fugue state most days. Plus Uncle Coop sorta freaked him out - he was _way_ too happy all the time. 

Paige had a way of calming everyone else down, but in this situation there really was only so much chipper pragmatism everyone could take. Wyatt spent most of his time in Henry's hospital room, which suited his mood much better. 

"Sounds like a lot of assumptions," he said. His wound hadn't been fatal, but it was fairly serious. He'd been out of the hospital for weeks, but he still had months of physical therapy ahead of him to regain full use of his legs. Aunt Paige was the most freaked out about it, but Wyatt suspected that was mostly because she got offended whenever Henry wouldn't let her heal him. "All you found was some spell stuff, right? Sounds like this other Chris was trying to fit the evidence into a theory he already had."

Wyatt shook his head. Chris's spell journal was in his lap; he wasn't expecting to figure out anything from it at this point, but it made him feel better - like he was doing something. "I looked it up myself. He's right about the holy oil. There isn't much use for it outside of what Chris mentioned - summoning saints, and then the soulmate stuff."

"Couldn't he have made something else himself?" Henry asked skeptically. Considering that he was the only Halliwell husband who was a bona fide mortal, he actually knew a lot more about spellcraft than anyone expected. Even Coop sort of blew it off a lot, being a demigod and all. "He did that a lot, didn't he?"

Wyatt shrugged. "It was too many coincidences. He was gonna go to school in her hometown, Uncle Henry. And it had to have been him, doing the spell at the grave - we tested it, and it was the same holy oil we found in his dorm room - "

"Coincidences," Henry said, "circumstantial evidence."

"No such thing when witches are involved," Wyatt shot back. "Stop trying to Devil's Advocate me."

"Not making you feel better?"

"Not particularly."

Henry shrugged as much as he was able, as sore as he still was. Wyatt understood why it drove Paige crazy - it would take less than a second to make all that go away. Literally just - a wave of Wyatt's hand, would prevent all these months of healing. 

Then again, Henry wasn't the type of person to take the easy way out. Wyatt had always known this about him - it's one of the reasons why everyone respected him so much. 

"So let's poke some holes in it, huh?" Henry said. "Chris lied to us about how long he'd been having these visions. He was seeing this girl - his soulmate - "

"Bianca," Wyatt said.

"Bianca. We don't know what he was seeing, so we can't just assume that it was painful," Henry said pointedly. "He goes off to school, has a bad time, and comes home early without telling anybody. That would fit with the other Chris's theory that he found out she was dead. But - if he knew her name, wouldn't he have Googled her? I mean, come on."

Wyatt thought about it for a second. "He was scared. Or - hopeful, maybe. If he knew that they were married in all these other timelines, maybe he wanted to meet her in the natural way. He didn't want to force it."

"Okay." Henry makes a face, considering. "Sure, I'll buy it. But he wouldn't have even looked her up?"

"Now _you're_ assuming," Wyatt said, "that he didn't know she was dead before he went to Amherst."

"Fair point."

"If he found out beforehand," Wyatt continued, sitting up a little straighter as it occurred to him, "then maybe that's _why_ he chose it. He wanted to have an excuse to spend time there. Maybe - he wanted to meet her relatives? Or maybe it was for whatever spell he was trying to come up with. He had some sort of plan."

"Which revolved around...what? Bringing her back to life?" Henry asked. "From what I remember that's kind of a no-no, right?"

"Uh, _yeah,_ " Wyatt said. He frowned. "I can't imagine Chris breaking one of the Natural Laws like that...but who knows what kind of information downloads he was getting from those dream visions? Maybe one of the other Chrises he was seeing...in one of those other worlds...maybe there was a way to do it."

Henry rubbed his scruffy jaw with one hand. The IV taped to the back pulled at his skin in a way that made Wyatt's stomach turn, just a little. "Or maybe he was trying to bring her over from one of those other worlds."

"That's the only logical conclusion I can think of," Wyatt confessed. "Chris thought that if he was seeing a version of Bianca that was in pain, who needed help..."

"To just pull someone out of their whole world like that, though? I don't understand it."

"Neither do I," Wyatt said, the words coming out much more bitterly than he'd intended them. He snapped his mouth shut in the next second, his eyes darting to the wall above Henry's head. 

"Wyatt," Henry said, after a gentle moment, "hey. Look at me, kid." Wyatt looked. "You're gonna get him back."

"Maybe," Wyatt replied. He'd never dare to say this at home, but he was beginning to lose a little hope. "Maybe. But maybe you don't understand how _good_ Chris was, Uncle Henry. When I say he was a good witch, I don't just mean in the 'good versus evil' sense, I mean he was - he was _talented._ " Wyatt shook his head. "I might be the Twice Blessed but Chris studied shit, he made up his own spells, he - he _worked_ at it. And he was powerful. When he wanted to do something, then he freakin' _did it._ "

"And you think he wanted to leave," Henry concluded, his voice rounded with sympathy. 

Wyatt's throat closed up. Three months ago, if he'd been asked to describe his brother in a sentence, he probably wouldn't have been able to come up with anything suitable. Not because Chris was particularly indescribable, but because he was _too much_ of everything: mercurial, constantly surprising, never content to fall into a rut simply because it was easy. Chris could blend into any group, any clique, any room - anywhere. He was Mom's favorite because he was the only one who could get her to actually _talk_ sometimes, and he could do the same thing with literally anybody: friend, foe, or otherwise. It's how he managed to get laid so often - one of the only things Wyatt genuinely envied him for - and also why nobody seemed to be able to really get to know him that well. Even when you thought you were close to him, there was still that doubt underneath: did you _really?_ Because wouldn't you stop being surprised by somebody eventually, if you really knew them?

"I think," Wyatt said, "that we're going about this the wrong way. Oriphel said we needed to know him. And we don't actually know him at all, do we?" Wyatt opened the spell journal on his lap, which fell open naturally to Chris's note, which he must have read a thousand times over in the weeks since Chris disappeared. "I'm starting to think we never did."

"Don't fall into that kind of thinking," Henry said. "It wasn't inevitable. We don't know why he did what he did, but we can't treat it like it was an unchangeable outcome. It was a moment of weakness - and he probably regrets it now." For a moment, Henry looked lost, his eyes wide and worried in his gaunt, bruised face. "Wherever he is."

"I'm not so sure about that." Wyatt flipped backwards - back in time, in Chris's journal. A few months before the last entry, there was another one about dimensional travel - the only other potential clue. But it was just a word-for-word copy of a spell in one of the preserved Books of Shadows at the library at Magic School - an old family whose descendants had long lost their magic after generations of intermarriage with mortals, and had donated all their artifacts years ago. Its presence was telling, but more to Chris's state of mind than what it was that he was doing, or how he managed to alter PJ and Wyatt's vision quest spell without saying a word, or changing even a single ingredient. 

_It opened him to the universe,_ is what Oriphel had said. Dad had repeated most of Mom's strange conversation with the Ancient Elder word for word - sitting in Phoebe's living room, crouching around the table with Wyatt, Phoebe and Paige as PJ and the younger cousins slept upstairs. But if he'd been like that his whole life - then why now? What was different? Did he just get _tired_ of it? Tired of living in this timeline, with its mundane problems - the idiot version of his brother, always jumping off of roofs without a safety net. Was it just too much? Was he simply ready to move on?

Wyatt was already growing to resent him. He could literally feel his heart hardening - calcifying against the hurt and betrayal, turning the love he'd always held for Chris into something stony and hard and untouchable. They'd never been particularly close - not in the way that Mom was to her sisters. That sort of relationship always seemed strange to Wyatt - how they talked every day, the way Aunt Pheebs almost _cooed_ over Mom, always calling her 'sweetie' and 'honey'...they used to make fun of it, he and Chris. They'd mock Mom and Pheebs behind their backs - making jokes about how co-dependent they were.

Aunt Paige was the cool one, the one that seemed a little more detached. But even she looked to the others for opinions before she acted. Wyatt could never picture him and Chris being like that - depending on each other to the point that they couldn't function alone. He was sort of proud of it in context - a little superior, a little arrogant about how different they were. How _mature_ they were, for not needing each other as much. 

Well, fuck him for thinking it meant something, Wyatt guessed. Fuck him for assuming they'd have time to talk about the big stuff later. Fuck him for letting the rest of their family think that they were having deep, personal conversations on those nights they'd lock themselves up together in the attic, instead of just...sitting in silence, drinking liquor they orbed surreptitiously out of the kitchen, aggressively not talking to each other. Bonding time, Wyatt had thought of it - what a joke. Sharing space wasn't bonding. It was just proximity. That was it. 

But most of all: fuck him for leaving, Wyatt thought. _Fuck him._

"Wyatt," Henry said, frustratingly perceptive. A family full of literal angels, and sometimes Wyatt was amazed at how blind they all seemed next to this totally normal guy whose big secret was that he spent most of his day around delinquent teenagers. "It's okay to be angry at him, you know."

"I'm really, really okay with being angry at him actually," Wyatt said. He snapped the journal shut with both palms. "I've accepted it as my general state of being, nowadays."

Henry hummed, neutral in a way that managed not to be condescending, which was also one of the reasons why he was the favorite uncle. Not that it was ever a competition between him and Coop, except for when Coop totally made it a competition and lost pathetically every time. "It's also okay to be sad."

Wyatt looked back up at the wall again. It was a very good spot on that wall, he thought. An excellent spot to stare at. 

"You don't have to do all this alone, is all I'm saying," Henry continued softly. "You've got your Mom and Dad, and your aunts. You've got me. You even have the other Chris, who seems to mean well enough, even if he comes off a little…" Wyatt made a face, and Henry huffed with laughter. "So...maybe what I'm saying is that you can afford to slow down just a little now. Take some time to...process."

"That sounds…" Wyatt thought about it. "Terrible."

Henry laughed again. "It is. It's absolutely terrible in every way." Wyatt finally looked at him again, and his face grew serious. "And it's not easy. And it's not ever going to go away. Not completely."

Wyatt's vision went a little hazy. Like a video game character when they were about to die: the whole world went watery and soft. 

"But you're not alone. You're never, ever going to be alone," Henry finished. He reached out a hand, and Wyatt fumbled to take it - awkward in sincerity, something that he wasn't exactly used to, but - he was half-Whitelighter, after all. You can only deny your nature for so long. "Okay? Be angry as long as you want. And when you're done, we can move onto the next thing."

"The next thing," Wyatt repeated dumbly. "Which is?"

Henry shrugged helplessly. "You tell me," he said. 

.

The only time Wyatt ever saw Chris cry was when their dog, Malcolm, died. 

A beautiful, elderly Australian shepherd, the family legend went that he'd shown up the day PJ was born, practically knocking on their door, as polite as could be. Already fully grown, Malcom was reaching the upper limits of his life by the time Chris was fifteen and Wyatt was seventeen, and eventually, in the midst of a hot, muggy summer - the same summer Henry Jr. was born, matter of fact - he passed away from cancer. 

Chris was the closest to him. He was always the one taking him out to the dog parks, playing around in the yard with him. Chris never actually ventured out into the backyard without Malcolm at his side - trotting patiently at his heel, obeying every command with an immediacy he never showed to anyone else in the family. Mom and Dad used to joke that Malcolm was Chris's familiar, in that halfway-serious sort of way that meant they sort of believed it.

They'd all been taking turns sitting with him, on those final few days, but Chris had been the one with Malcolm when he finally passed away, because of course he was. Out in the yard, in Malcolm's favorite patch of grass beneath the oak tree - where he would sit for hours, once he got too old to run much anymore - Wyatt came upon his brother sitting with the body of his dog, his head bent over Malcolm's colorful fur, his shoulders shaking silently. 

He'd felt sick to his stomach - embarrassed, sort of ashamed to see Chris like that - so vulnerable in a way he normally would never let anyone see. But more than that, he'd felt sort of betrayed - unsettled, as if something fundamental about his life had shifted. Like the first time he found out that Santa wasn't real - a fiction had been exposed, a sheet had been pulled away. Something was not really what it seemed like. 

Of course he knew that his brother was as awkward and as human as the rest of them - he had acne on his face in junior high, his breath stank in the morning just like everyone else's, he got angry and made mistakes and tried too hard sometimes, just like the rest of them. But there still seemed to be an unshakable core beneath the little flaws, something solid and unyielding that Wyatt never realized he depended on so much. In the last two months since Chris disappeared - _left_ \- he hadn't gone a single day - not even a single fucking _hour,_ actually - without thinking, _Chris would know the answer to this._ Every time Wyatt almost killed himself, it was Chris who pulled his ass out of the fire. Every time he screwed up - it was Chris he went to for advice. 

Why? He didn't know. He was the older brother, he was the one everyone was supposed to look up to. But it didn't suit Wyatt - it never had. He was the one they went to for _comfort_ \- to cheer them up with a joke, to take them on an adventure, to distract them. Chris was the smart one, the responsible one. He was everyone's first call. 

So what happens when the ground beneath your feet starts to shake? Cracks and falls away? Wyatt was a born and bred Californian. You'd think he'd be used to it. 

On the day it happened - the day of - Chris had actually mentioned Malcolm. For the first time in years, actually - as they were getting ready to do the spell. Chris was lounging over by the window - drinking from his water bottle, as casual as anything. He certainly hadn't seemed like he was planning to pull a Liz Taylor and exit their universe completely, stage fucking left. 

"Man," he'd said. "We never did put up that plaque for Malcolm."

Wyatt stopped, taken aback by the sudden reminder of that day - Chris in the yard, crying by himself. Wyatt hadn't said anything to him. He'd just slowly turned around and went back inside, and left Chris alone with his grief. 

"Aw," PJ said, half-distracted by the summoning circle she was drawing in white chalk on the wooden floorboards. "You guys were gonna put up a memorial for him? That's sweet."

"Yeah. On the oak tree," Chris said. "Why didn't we ever do it?"

"Henry Jr. was born, remember?" Wyatt said, jerking himself out of the unsettling memory. "We got distracted."

"Still." Chris shrugged, emptying the last of his water. "We should've followed through."

Wyatt just swallowed, feeling strangely guilty. PJ, ever the optimist, lifted her face up and smiled though, breaking the moment. 

"Maybe we can," she said brightly. "We could probably conjure one, so we wouldn't have to spend any money."

Chris smiled at her kindly. He always treated PJ gently, with a distant sort of delicacy that he didn't use with anyone else. "Good idea, PJ."

PJ nodded in approval. She always seemed to be passing judgment of some kind - in the nicest way possible, as if perpetually gauging the emotional health of everyone around her. It was annoying in the weirdest, most endearing way possible - and the reason why they'd fixated recently on the visions. She wanted to help Chris so bad - she just couldn't let go of it. "You ready? Remember - you don't have to go through with it, Chris. These things are supposed to be kind of intense - they're designed to aim for your weak spots."

"Well, I've got plenty of those," Chris joked. He seemed almost chipper - seeing him in a good mood had been rare, the last few months. He was worried about school - or so they thought. "Just kidding, Peej."

"No you weren't," PJ said, "and _don't_ call me that."

Chris just grinned.

In the early morning light, nothing at all had seemed wrong. Maybe he hadn't known - maybe the impulse hadn't hit him until he was already in the circle, standing in the middle of their little herb rune, still joking around with PJ, winding her up a little like he always did.

"If I start seeing giant clowns, what does that mean?" he asked. "Does that stand for unresolved issues with my dad or a fear of heights, I can't remember - "

"You don't have to do this, you know! It won't work anyway, if your mind isn't open."

"My mind is always open," Chris said. He reached over the chalk line to ruffle her hair, which made her jerk away - although she was hiding a smile. "Way more open than yours, Dear Prudence."

"Don't call me that either," PJ said, laughing. All three of them were, the whole time. Nothing seemed wrong at all. 

Maybe if there'd been something - some weird thing he'd said, a look on his face, a gesture - anything. But Wyatt had been thinking about those twenty minutes for two months straight, and he couldn't come up with anything at all that was out of the ordinary. 

"What kind of vision quest am I going on again?" he asked. 

"To find the source of your unrest," PJ said, and Chris nodded, looking thoughtful. "Not your pain - your _unrest._ That's the part that's keeping you from moving on, Chris. From actually healing from these visions, instead of dwelling on them."

"Hear that, little brother?" Wyatt said. Chris winced as he always did, when Wyatt called him that, which was the main reason Wyatt kept doing it. "You dwell."

"Fuck off," Chris muttered, rolling his eyes. Wyatt laughed at him. "Alright. Whatever you say, PJ."

"Remember, Chris," PJ said, and Chris looked straight at her, his eyes wide and serious. Waiting to hear what she had to say. "You're the only one who can recognize what you're looking for. You have to guide the vision yourself - lead it where you want it to go. If you let it get away from you, then it won't be any help at all. It'll just be…" PJ shrugged. "Nonsense, probably."

Chris nodded solemnly. He considered that for a long moment, then closed his eyes, nodding. He was sitting cross-legged in the circle, his forearms on his knees, like he was meditating. 

"Huh," he said. That was the last thing he said to them. 

So what came next? Wyatt didn't have a fucking clue. That was the whole problem.


	3. interlude

_Prue forgot all of Piper's recipes years ago - maybe on purpose. Some days she thought so. But from time to time, bits and pieces would come back to her, piggybacked to a memory of her little sister twirling around in the kitchen, coming up with something new for dinner. You roll up basil, like a cigarette, and then slice it into strips. Temper cream before you add it to a sauce, or it'll curdle. No, not the plain edge knife, silly - use serrated for bread. Yes, that means the bumpy one. Don't put it in the dishwasher, for God's sake, it'll rust!_

_This baby version of her nephew knew all the tricks. He cooked every day that Bianca allowed him to: American recipes, classics Prue hadn't eaten in years. The kids couldn't get enough - started asking for spaghetti for dinner instead of huaraches or pozole, PB &J in their lunch bags instead of the tamales Bianca usually packed. One time, he even made pancakes for breakfast and Nellie almost lost her mind. Prue had never seen her bounce off the walls like that. _

_It made her fingers itch to call home, in a way nothing else in these years apart had. Prue had left and never looked back - none of them had, assured in their righteousness, hardened by anger and betrayal and indignation. When Matías was born, Chris had said something - just once, as Bianca slept, hushed in the hospital room, his voice low as his son - only three hours old - blinked up at them curiously, waving his little fists in the air, already eager to fly._

_"Do you think they felt him?" he asked, staring down at Matías with a sort of awe that Prue had never, ever seen before. "Do you think they know?"_

_Prue had hugged him tight, and told him,_ I don't know, probably not, _and they never talked about it again._

_But now, Prue was thinking about it. Thinking about it every time this younger, kinder Chris asked her a question: how did it happen? Do you talk to them still? Do you think they're still angry? Did you ever think about reaching out?_

_At first it pissed her off, but now she was used to it: prepared for the pointed questions that would inevitably come in her weakest moment. This Chris was chillingly good at finding the weak spots - he seemed much more like a Whitelighter than their Chris ever had been. Great at rooting out those emotional bruises that you were protecting beneath thick layers of cotton and wool. Uniquely skilled in drawing your attention to the spots that still needed some bandaging._

_She didn't pity Bianca. Walking around the house like a ghost, she seemed only halfway awake most days - only fully seeming like herself when the children were present. The rest of the time she seemed half-faded - resentful of the younger Chris's presence, but unable to truly deny his company, as hungry and lonely as she was for some sort of reassurance that her husband was still alive, still out there somewhere and reachable. On the mornings that Floriana would whisk the kids away to school, and Prue would be getting ready to go out for a shoot - she'd look up and glimpse them sitting on the balcony off the master bedroom, drinking coffee and talking. Sitting in chairs that were turned towards each other, feet firmly planted, as if facing off in some silent battle. What the hell did they talk about? Prue wasn't sure she even wanted to know._

_If he'd been even a little apologetic - ashamed, or regretful - maybe it would be easier, but he didn't. This Chris was cool and untouchable - like an Elder, Prue thought. That's what he reminded them all of - the Elders. Assured, unmovable. Almost serene._

_Why did he come? It'd been an accident, was all he said. He'd had a bad day, he hadn't been thinking straight. His control was off. But as long as he's here, he might as well help, right?_

_"What on Earth could you possibly help us with?" Bianca spat, on one of those first, ugly nights. "You took my husband away from us - my children's father! - and you say you want to help?"_

_"I can help you with some things," Chris replied. "Your son's powers - I can help with that."_

_He'd seemed so earnest. It was unsettling, coming from a familiar face. Their Chris was almost never that...open._

_"How?" they asked. "How can you?"_

_"I know a thing or two about balance," is all he said. It didn't do much to reassure them - but Matías hadn't had another incident since the other Chris arrived, and he seemed...peaceful. Reassured, somehow, after the little lessons they allowed the two to have. Heavily supervised, of course - but all the other Chris seemed to want to do was to talk. He'd ask Matías about his day - his friends, his homework, his football team - and Matías would chatter away happily, not disconcerted at all at the teenager with his father's face ("he's sort of like a cousin, isn't he?" he'd said to Prue, early on). And afterwards, somehow - that impatient energy would fade, just a little. Could it have always been that easy? What had they been missing, all this time? Those were devastating questions for Bianca, Prue could tell._

_"You should call her," Chris said. Over and over again, he said it. "They think about you just as often as you think about them, you know."_

_"I know that's not true," Prue told him. She knew for a fact, actually, that Phoebe still hated her. Blamed her in a way that not even Piper still managed. "Is this why you came here? You wanted to roam the multiverse, handing out therapy to people who aren't even interested?"_

_Chris smirked at her. "I didn't have a plan," he said. "Everyone always thinks I have a plan, but I don't. It just happens to me."_

_"What happens to you?"_

_He shrugged. His shoulders looked abnormally thin, in the borrowed clothes. "Everything."_

_Prue huffed. "Well that's very cryptic."_

_"You're not the first person to get annoyed by that, believe it or not."_

_He always made her laugh, despite herself. That was one thing he did have in common with their Chris: his wit was just as sharp. And he was just as charming about it, too._

_Prue looked at her hands. Her magic had vanished the day she left San Francisco: the Power of Three broken, much more permanently than it had ever been before. This time, it wasn't a demon manipulating them from the sidelines, causing them to fight. Or a grandmother, for that matter. This time, it was forever. No matter what this Chris thought._

_Sometimes she felt like she was already a ghost - floating around in this new life, taking pictures of the ones leftover. The survivors. Beautiful, strong Bianca, who took no prisoners and loved them all so fiercely it was sometimes terrifying. Open-hearted Matías, who made her teeth hurt he was so kind and genuine, who loved being sticking his head out of the window as they drove in the car and orbing around the city with his father, because at heart he was really just a bird of flight, temporarily tethered to the ground. And solemn little Eleanor - Nelita, Nellie-bean, with her long dark hair and big brown eyes, who was quiet most of the time unless she was saying something sort of devastating. Wise beyond her years, and extremely psychic - she had everyone's number, in the first second she saw them._

_And Chris. Center of the universe - Prue's favorite from the beginning. He'd been just as quiet as a kid, but as he grew into a man he stopped giving a shit about what his parents thought and let himself start to speak. Prue would walk into fire for him in a second. For any of them, really - but for Chris...for Chris, she'd do anything._

_They'd all do anything. To get him back? Fucking anything._

_"Do you really think you can fix everything?" Prue asked. "You think that highly of yourself?"_

_"No," Chris replied, more soberly than he usually was when they talked. He seemed to regard Prue with an amused sort of fondness - almost like he couldn't believe she was real. She knew the feeling well. "No, I just figured I should try. You know - to try and make up for all of this."_

_"And you think badgering me into calling my estranged sisters is helping?" Prue asked incredulously._

_"I was actually trying to badger you into forgiving yourself," Chris said sheepishly. "I guess I'm still new at the therapy thing, huh?"_

_Prue laughed in his face. It wasn't very funny, though._

_"You know my mom - the one in the timeline I just left, I mean - she's still devastated about losing you. She thinks about you every single day." Chris looked up at the sky, where the gathering clouds could only barely be glimpsed through the trees that lined Bianca's property. "She's never gotten over it, not really. She became a different person when you died. She thinks of it as the day her heart dried up."_

_Prue didn't even know what to make of that. "That wasn't me," she said. "That was another me. Not the person I am here." And certainly not the Piper who lived here, she thought._

_"Maybe." Chris shrugged. "But I guess I think some things are universal. Some people are universal."_

_"People like you?" Prue asked, suspicious and tired and sad, so very sad. "People who see things, whose magic reacts in weird ways?"_

_"People like me," Chris agreed. "And like Matías."_

_Prue thought of little Matí, suddenly walking off into the universe one day - just because he was thinking the wrong thing during a spell. Because he was angry, or tired, or just having a bad morning. The incidents he'd had already were terrifying enough. What would it be like when he was this Chris's age? Or older?_

_"If you can help us," Prue said, "help Matías, then I'll get you home. I promise."_

_"You can do that?" He was always so neutral about getting back to his own universe. He was more concerned with getting their Chris back for them then he was with getting home himself, it seemed._

_"I can try," Prue said. "And I usually get what I want. You'll come to learn that about me."_

_"Huh," Chris said. He grinned at her. "I think I already knew that."_


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A very long chapter, to make up for a very long hiatus. (No but really, this one's the big one.)

_"I don't - I mean, look, this whole year has just been a series of tests, right? To see what we're made of. Well, maybe this is one more test. Which means we can't give up, alright? So while the Elders are figuring out what we're supposed to do, we still have work to do. Okay?"_

_**All Hell Breaks Loose** _

PJ was a 'handful,' according to her family. They didn't know that she knew that they thought this; she'd overheard her mom talking to Aunt Piper once when she was in ninth grade. It was before the time she got suspended for levitating the class bully onto the roof, which had been a whole _thing,_ but after the week she accidentally summoned a dead lady from the graveyard next to her school and couldn't stop talking in a New Jersey accent for about eight and a half days. She's pretty sure that was what they were talking about. 

"She takes after her mother," Aunt Piper said knowingly. She'd been laughing at the time, which had lessened the sting of that word: "handful." A handful of what? PJ still wasn't sure. "Didn't I tell you? I told you. I've been warning you for _years,_ Pheebs. Whatever you do, it comes back to you threefold, remember?"

"I thought that was like, when you did a spell to clean your kitchen and it broke your blender," her mom whined. "Not 'I was the black sheep wild child of the family and now my eldest daughter won't stop summoning zombies.'"

Aunt Piper just laughed some more; she was the only one in the family who hadn't been horrified about the incident with poor old Mrs. Rochester. She'd thought it was funny, actually, and kind of sweet, if also a bit shortsighted. 

"Listen baby girl," Aunt Piper said, pulling her in close at the breakfast table, "your parents are just worried about you. But I'm not ever gonna yell at you for trying to help someone, okay? So let's make a deal: next time you have a vision of something you know your parents won't like, you come to me. Alright? We'll figure it out together. Promise me."

They pinky-sweared on it, so PJ couldn't go back on her word. Not until Chris asked her to, anyway - and then, only then, it was because he'd promised to tell his mom himself. Swore to her on the Book of Shadows, actually - the lying little twerp.

Chris was the only one in the whole family who didn't make her feel like a handful; mostly because he was an even _bigger_ handful and he was kinda proud of it. Every time she got in trouble he would come visit her in her prison (ahem: bedroom) on the downlow, sneaking in past the wards using one of those cool pendants he was always promising he'd teach her how to make. Then he'd listen to her explain why she got grounded this time, and then cheer her up by telling her a story about something much worse that he did once. Usually it was so outrageous that it was obviously a big lie, which was what made it funny. It took her a long time to realize that they probably _were_ true - they just didn't happen to _her_ Chris. 

"One time," Chris told her once, "I got into a fight at school with this guy who was always picking on the smallest kid in the class. He was autistic, so of course everyone picked on him, and he had these big, thick glasses that this asshole kid would steal from him and hide somewhere. It used to make me really, really mad, but when I told the teacher she wouldn't do anything - there were too many of us in the class - and so one day I finally got fed up, so I punched the bully kid in the balls and stole his wallet."

PJ burst out laughing. "You did not!"

"I did," Chris said proudly, poking her shoulder. "His name was Nicky - the nice kid, not the asshole, his name was Marc - and he lived down the street from me. He could grow flowers with his mind." Chris's face went a little weird, distant like it did whenever he told these stories to PJ in her bedroom, late at night when the rest of her family was asleep. "He was such a sweet guy. We were friends, sort of - as much as we could be, since his family didn't want him hanging out with me too much. You got a sort of reputation, when you hung around me, you know."

"That's bullshit," PJ said. "You're not cool enough to have a _reputation._ "

"I was back then," Chris said with a grin. "There were two firestarters in my class that were scared to death of me, even though I'd never said a word to them and they probably could've kicked my scrawny ass if they wanted to. They were twins - Alec and Anna. From Oregon, I think. Long blonde hair - I had a crush on Anna for a hot second, before I figured out she hated my guts."

"And what did she hate your guts for?" PJ asked indulgently. At the time she was still humoring him, thinking he was making up a story. "Was she dating the bully guy, the one you kicked in the balls?"

Chris's face went strange. "Something like that," he said, and that was the end of that one. 

PJ felt rather stupid after the fact - even after he spilled the beans about the visions, she still didn't put the pieces together, about the stories. She just thought he was making them up - he never seemed to take them seriously, after all. And some of them were so ridiculous they _had_ to be fake. Right?

"This reminds me of the time Aunt Paige married her boss," he said about the Dragonfly Incident when PJ mispronounced the word 'inspect' and accidentally gave all the bugs in the house human sentience. "Not on purpose. There was a truth potion _and_ a compulsion spell involved at the same time, which I'm sure you know never leads anywhere good."

Or, "once, in Bulgaria I think, I found the corpse of a griffin frozen in a block of ice. Pretty sure it was this necromancer that Grams used to date. That's Great Grams, I mean. Not our Grandma - _our_ Grandma was nice."

And, "there's like, an entire network of caves beneath the original Plymouth Rock, which was built by a coven of witches in the 1500s to hide from Catholic witch hunters. It was claimed by a demon in the early 19th century who turned it into his lair, and now it's mostly abandoned because parts of it are collapsing, but there's this one spot that was protected by a rune circle that evil can't cross, and if you know the password you can get in. I had a girlfriend that used to like to make out there. It's 'afternoonified,' by the way. The password."

Or one of PJ's least favorites was, "there was one month where I ate nothing but grasshoppers."

This was on a night after PJ got in trouble for trying to replace a pot roast she'd accidentally dropped by conjuring a new one out of a dish towel. In her defense - the towel had been very clean. "No way, ew! Why?"

"Because," Chris said slowly, his head angled weirdly where it was propped against his hand, "I...didn't have anything else. I was, um, camping." He rolled over a bit on PJ's floor so he could grin up at her. "Yeah, that's it - I was camping. All my food got ruined by, uh, the rain."

"So you just...ate bugs instead," PJ said, wrinkling her nose. "That's disgusting, Chris."

"I know. But they were pretty good," Chris said. "People eat them normally, you know. Dip them in chocolate, roll them in spices." He grinned. "They sell them at health food stores - dried up, with the legs still attached…"

"Gross, ugh," PJ yanked her foot back as Chris reached out to tickle it, glaring at him as he laughed. "No _thank_ you."

"Different cultures, different standards," Chris said with a shrug. "Anyway, I didn't have chocolate - that was long gone by then. But spices, I had. I had every spice in the world and then some." His eyes went distant. "You fry them, and then eat them with lime salt and chili powder. It's not bad."

"You were camping, but you had...a deep fryer," PJ said, deeply skeptical.

"I'm very resourceful, Dear Prudence," Chris said, grinning. "Do you know what it's like to not eat something for so long that you stop remembering what it tastes like? That's what it was like, only I forgot _everything._ I ate the same thing over and over - and it didn't taste bad, it just sounds bad, you know, because it was bugs - but it kept me alive and relatively healthy, and I had some plants too anyway. Plenty of water, some fruit occasionally. Fish from the river. It wasn't terrible." His face was sort of scrunched up, like he was actually remembering, which of course he was. But PJ still thought he was just making it up to gross her out, at the time. "But when I got...back, my girlfriend, she - she made me some food. Nothing too complicated, just - I think it was chicken? Some kind of seared chicken, and some squash. And I couldn't finish it. I couldn't stand the smell." He smiled wryly up at the ceiling. "I remember taking the first bite and thinking, 'this isn't what chicken tastes like,' because I was expecting...well, I dunno what I was expecting. It was strange."

PJ frowned down at him. "You've never _had_ a girlfriend," she accused. "Unless you're referring to your one week stands."

Chris grinned up at her again. "I had one," he said. "I had a really, really good one."

"Oh yeah? What was her name?"

"None of your beeswax," Chris said, throwing a pillow at her. She dodged it easily, snorting at him. "She was a great cook anyway. I got used to it pretty quick."

"Oh, your imaginary girlfriend was also a gourmet chef? Of course she was, of course she was - "

"Have you ever," Chris said, sitting up on his elbows, "had grilled plantains?"

"Aren't those like bananas?" PJ asked.

Chris snorted. "She made this _sauce,_ " he said dreamily, laying back down on the rug, "it was spicy, but it also had hazelnuts and apples in it...it took her all day to make. She'd get up early to put it on the stove, and the whole house would smell beautiful. All day. She smelled like it too - sweet peppers and tomatillos and dried apples."

PJ rolled her eyes at him. "Okay, weirdo," she said, "your nighttime fantasies are a little bit more niche than I was expecting but I guess I should thank you for not oversharing - "

"That wasn't a metaphor," Chris interrupted, laughing. "I'm actually talking about food, here."

"Sure you are," PJ said, making a face at him just so he'd laugh again. He did it so rarely, otherwise. Sometimes she thought that the only time he actually did it was in her room, on those nights. 

PJ knew now, of course, that he was talking about Bianca. Alt-Chris had let enough slip that she knew her Chris had been seeing her for sure - the mysterious Bianca Rosado, half witch, half demon with the intimidating ancestry - the type of backstory that all the kids at Magic School would kill to actually have. Every witch and nymph you met there was claiming some long family history connected to Salem or medieval Europe or the First Nation covens that drew the ley lines that still ran beneath the ground, thrumming with power even generations later...but of course most of them were just normal kids from normal families. You didn't need a two-hundred-year backstory to be magical - you just needed to be lucky. But Bianca actually had that: the history. The legacy, she supposed. Maybe that was one of the things they bonded over, in the beginning - those other Chrises, and their Biancas. Maybe that was why they were so connected. 

That PJ knew all these details about her was a weird feeling - that she knew details at all made her feel strange, and kind of sad. Chris had been so _lonely_ all the time - they all could feel it. You didn't need to have empathy to see it. That he'd been trying, in his own way, to share it with PJ...it made her wish she'd said different things. Made her wish she hadn't made fun of him so much, even though he laughed. 

What must he have felt like, when he discovered she was dead here? PJ couldn't even imagine. She remembered the warmth in his voice more than anything else: the distant fondness, the naked longing he let show from time to time, when it was late enough and she was quiet enough to let him talk. 

"I split open my lip once," he said on one dark night. They'd been sitting on the window seat together - she was crying, he had his arm around her, awkwardly trying for comfort, which he'd never been all that good at. It was after a huge fight with her parents - the worst one they'd ever had, and PJ couldn't stop thinking about her little sister - sweet little Peyton, in her crib, her face scrunched up in distress as the three of them screamed at each other in the living room. She hadn't stopped crying for the first hour Chris was there. 

"How?" she asked. 

"I don't remember," Chris said, a little too quickly, so she knew it was a lie. This was an important story, she knew. Even if she still thought it was made up at the time. "It was pretty bad. All the way down my chin. A really big cut - would've fucked up my face, if I hadn't gotten it healed by a Whitelighter later."

"But not at the time?" PJ leaned her head against his shoulder and smiled weakly. "Were you camping again?"

"Nah. But I couldn't heal myself back then...I couldn't really see either, there was a spell that...sort of messed up my eyes a little? I don't really remember." He cleared his throat, and PJ remembered that his voice was shaking a little. She'd thought at the time that it was because he was nervous. Crying always made him nervous. "My girlfriend stitched me up. She almost couldn't do it, because she was so freaked out...upset. She did okay with blood normally, but when it was me…"

PJ shivered a little, frowning at their reflection in her window. This one was much more serious than any of the others, and she felt weird about it. Unsettled, somehow. "Chris, what are you…"

"I'm sorry, I'm not trying to freak you out," he said, pulling her a bit closer. "I do have a point."

"Is this another metaphor?" PJ asked. "The cut is the fight, the spell that blinded you is my pride, or something - "

"No," Chris said, huffing out a laugh. "No. I'm not that creative. It's just a story - I don't have to tell the rest if you don't want to hear it."

"No, I wanna hear it."

"Okay." Chris pressed his mouth against the side of her head, just for a second, like her dad often did when he hugged her goodbye. A fatherly sort of kiss that make PJ's heart tremble. "Have you ever had stitches? Real ones."

"No."

"They hurt," Chris said. "She gave me something to dull the pain a little, but I still felt it. I couldn't see anything, and I couldn't talk, but I could still hear, so she talked the whole time to keep me calm. Then when I could hear her starting to freak out, I reached out and took her hand, just like this," Chris took PJ's hand in both of his, gripping it tightly, "and she'd calm down again. It took us almost an hour to finish because we were both so shaky and upset."

"God," PJ muttered. "Chris, no offense but this story is like, way creepy."

"I know," Chris said wryly. "It's one of my favorites, though - do you wanna know why?"

"Yeah."

"Because it got easier really quickly," Chris said, still squeezing her hand. "At first, it hurts. It hurts so badly that you think you might pass out - it's just so overwhelming, and you can't think. But then that first hurt fades, and it turns into this burning, dull ache - and that's still so distracting, so much that you almost wish it was like before, when it blocked out everything else, because when you can think a _little,_ then it's almost worse. Because you remember what it felt like when it didn't hurt, and you're aware that what you're feeling is wrong."

PJ swallowed hard. 

"But that all happens so fast, you don't even notice it," Chris said. "Eventually - quickly - you get used to it. It still hurts, but it's not so bad anymore - you can breathe, you can think, you can talk - well I couldn't talk, but you get my point - you grit your teeth and you squeeze your girl's hand and you get it done. Because nothing is as bad as it is in the first moment. And that moment doesn't last forever."

"Is that the metaphor part?" PJ asked, her voice wobbling a little. 

"I guess," Chris said with a laugh. He pulled her closer by her hand, back into his halfway hug, and PJ went willingly, sniffling a little against his shirt. "There's nothing wrong with you, you know."

"There's nothing wrong with you either," PJ replied. 

"Your parents just want you to be careful because they love you. And I know how it feels, I mean - I get it," Chris said, squeezing her again. "It feels like they don't see you. But they do, honey. I promise."

PJ remembered - she tucked her head against his shoulder, and he let her. He wasn't a touchy-feely sort of person - even at their Grandpa's funeral, when everyone was hugging each other or holding hands, he'd stood apart - stoic and silent, looking silently up at the priest, listening intently as if he wanted to memorize every word of the service. He endured hugs from his mom, but from everyone else, he was Hands Off Only - it'd always been that way. But on that night, in PJ's attic bedroom - he let her lean against him for a long time, and he didn't say a word. He didn't pull away or stiffen up or make her feel for a single second that she wasn't welcome. 

PJ hadn't told anyone else about the stories - mostly because it didn't matter, because there weren't any details she could remember that would really be relevant. But also, because he told them to her in confidence. He never asked her to keep it a secret - never even hinted at it - but still, somehow, PJ knew that she owed him that silence. Because she was always his exception, just like he was hers. 

Dear Prudence - that's what he called her more often than anyone else. It was a song, a joke, but also: he meant it. PJ always knew she shouldn't take it for granted. 

Alt-Chris liked spicy food. He drank black coffee and he had tiny scars on his knuckles which PJ still couldn't figure out - wasn't he a Whitelighter? Wasn't his dad a Whitelighter too? Like sure, maybe his family was all fucked up in his world but he had to have grown up with them, right? Learned how to heal himself like their Chris had?

His apartment was in Chinatown - a truly shitty dump of a bedroom, with a tiny kitchenette that made PJ wince whenever she beamed over to drag him out of bed. Because he also drank - as in, a _lot._ Half the time she saw him was because he'd gotten too fucked up the night before to remember that he was supposed to meet one of them somewhere for something, and PJ was the only one that Alt-Chris allowed in his apartment. 

"You remind me of my mother," he told her once. It hadn't sounded like a compliment. "Very pushy." He waved his hand at her vaguely; he'd been somewhat tipsy at the time, of course. "Too pushy for her own good."

"A common trait in your family," PJ said, obvious in her disapproval. Alt-Chris hadn't even blinked at her scorn - he never did. 

The only other person he seemed to tolerate was Aunt Piper, but she was spending more time in the Underworld these days than she was up on the surface. Supposedly Uncle Leo was keeping an eye on her, but PJ could feel his anxiety every time he stopped by the house to talk to her mom about it. 

"She's fine," Alt-Chris said, dismissing their entire family's worries with a decisive wave of his hand. "At least she's out there doing something productive."

His implication being that their vision quest plan wasn't productive, of course, but PJ was used to his opinion on that. "Hunting demons obsessively in order to avoid dealing with her emotions is productive?"

"Who said she's not dealing with them?" Alt-Chris was very rarely without some sort of drink in his hand, these days. He even brought a flask with him when he was elbowed into coming by the Manor, which of course he hated doing. "She's dealing with them. She's killing demons, too, which is never a bad thing."

"It is if she gets hurt!" PJ exclaimed. 

"She's been fighting evil for longer than both of us have been alive, kiddo," Alt-Chris said. "I think she'll be fine."

He was right, of course, and what made it frustrating was that her mother told her the same exact thing - albeit a little more nicely. 

"We're all worried about her sweetie, but we can't make what she's feeling just go away," Mom said, hugging PJ close. She was doing that a lot, ever since Chris disappeared - hugging them, running her hands through their hair, trying to keep them close whenever possible. Wyatt was still staying at Paige's, but everyone else had gravitated to PJ's house - and to her mom and dad, whose arms were, of course, always wide open for anyone who wanted to step into them. "All we can do is support her, and make sure she knows we're there for her if she wants to talk."

"And get Chris back," PJ reminded her pointedly. "Remember, we're still trying to do that? We _are_ still trying to do that, right - "

"Of course," Mom said in dismay, "of course we are. And you're doing such a great job." Her smile looked stretched thin across her face though, like she was faking it. PJ could feel the despair beneath it, clear as day. 

It wasn't that they hadn't tried - they'd all been trying for three months. Uncle Leo had introduced them to three different Elders, all of whom had been scrying - or whatever it is that Elders did - for the location of Alt-Chris's universe so they could open another portal, but there was nothing. Aunt Paige had found a necromancer named Breanne who had been charging them three hundred bucks a week to try and find it in her spare time, but there was nothing yet. Chief Morris had also gotten them in touch with a physics professor from Oregon who came from a family of witches, who was helping Uncle Leo with some complex math things that PJ didn't understand, and all of them had gone over every detail of Chris's journal, his room, every note he'd ever written to try and figure out what had happened to the original spell - try and find some kind of clue, _something_ that would point them in the right direction. But there was nothing. The problem remained the same: Chris had gone out into the universe, and they didn't know where. 

They'd found lots of different worlds on their own, of course. But the details were always off: in this one, he had blue eyes, not green. In that one, he'd gone through the portal _with_ PJ and Wyatt, not alone. In another, he was a girl. In another - a twelve-year-old. None of them were _their_ Chris. 

That everyone had been slowly coming to the conclusion that what had happened was irreversible wasn't lost on PJ; she, however, wasn't going to accept it. Even Alt-Chris seemed dismal and hopeless most days, when she saw him. PJ supposed that was why she kept stubbornly showing up over and over again. Whether he welcomed her or not. 

"Really?" PJ wrinkled her nose at him as they descended to the kitchen, and Alt-Chris immediately made a beeline for Aunt Piper's liquor cabinet. "Are you even _allowed_ to - "

"Yes," Alt-Chris said flatly, pouring himself a glass of whiskey. "Anyway, I bought most of this."

"You buy Aunt Piper booze?"

"She doesn't have much time to run errands anymore," Alt-Chris said, pouring himself into one of the kitchen stools. It was easy for PJ to think of him as a different person, because the way he carried himself was so different: stiff and controlled, except for when he was drinking, at which point he moved like his bones weighed three times as much. His feet dragging, his arms waving wildly - his head rolling on his neck like he couldn't be bothered to keep it up. 

"I don't know how I feel about you running _errands_ for my grieving aunt, but - "

"Oh, did you want to take over?" Alt-Chris asked, a low-grade anger burning beneath the blank mask he kept pulled over his face. PJ could always feel his anger, but lately it was getting stronger and stronger - and infiltrated by inky black veins of despair. "Or maybe her _real son_ could pull his head out of his ass and pop by the grocery store once in awhile for her - "

"Hey," PJ said, frowning. 

"Oh sorry, I forgot I'm not supposed to say anything about any of you," Alt-Chris said meanly, tipping his glass back as he drank, his eyes on the ceiling. 

PJ took a deep breath, reminding herself not to rise to the bait. "Thank you for coming," she said evenly, setting the spell supplies on the counter carefully. "I really do appreciate it, you know."

Alt-Chris just grunted, regarding her through narrow eyes. 

"Maybe we could try again," she said, determinedly chipper. "After you, um. Rest for a little awhile?" PJ couldn't help but glance at the whiskey bottle, which Alt-Chris had carried with him to his seat at the counter. "If you're up for it later. The moon is in a good phase tonight; we shouldn't waste it."

"What exactly," Alt-Chris said thinly, "am I supposed to be questing for, here? I already know what I've lost."

PJ's hands faltered on the herbs she was sorting. The wave of emotion that Alt-Chris projected whenever he thought of his children was almost overwhelming in its intensity. The first time PJ felt it, she'd almost passed out. "I don't know for sure. But Oriphel said there was a connection between you and our Chris, and if you were willing - "

"I'm willing," Alt-Chris said, "I just don't know what I'm supposed to be looking for." He kept glancing over at the doorway, as if expecting someone to appear, but the Manor was empty. It usually was, anymore. "Vision quests are therapeutic in nature. They don't tell you anything you don't already know."

"Maybe you do know something useful then, but you haven't recognized it," PJ said cheerfully, turning around once her face was composed again. His face darkened slightly, so before he could snap at her, she continued. "Or maybe you don't remember it. They're good for recalling lost or stolen memories too, you know."

"I've had plenty of memories lost," Alt-Chris said. "Most of them I gave away, though. None of it is shit I want back in my head."

"Most people don't," PJ said. "But that's sort of the point - dealing with the stuff you don't wanna face."

Alt-Chris just sighed and took another drink. "Give me an hour. We'll eat something, freshen up. Then we'll try again."

"Make it _solid_ food and you've got yourself a deal," PJ said pointedly, eyeing his liquor bottle. 

Alt-Chris rolled his eyes, but nodded. " _Exactly_ like my mother," he muttered. PJ turned her shoulder in triumph, and pretended she didn't hear. 

They had the Manor to themselves. Aunt Piper had been gone for almost a week, chasing down some demon cult that they thought might have more information on alternate universes. And Wyatt, of course, was still staying at Aunt Paige's house. 

"I used to hate this room," Alt-Chris said idly, his half-eaten plate abandoned on the coffee table. He'd left the alcohol in the kitchen though, which PJ counted as a victory, and seemed preoccupied with the antique lamp that lived on the little table next to the couch. PJ didn't know what held his attention exactly; it was just an ugly lamp. It'd been there her entire life, and would be there until the day she died, probably. "We never spent much time in it. Only when my mother had guests over."

"Guests?" Something about the way he said the word made the hair on PJ's arms rise. 

"Friends, acquaintances. You're familiar with the concept?"

"In theory." PJ shrugged. "Aunt Piper has some friends, mostly through her club. And my mom hangs out with people from work too sometimes. But they always told me it was a risk, with mortals. Too dangerous to get too close."

Alt-Chris scoffed. "Right."

"You don't agree?"

"It's not that they're wrong, it's just a hell of a thing to say to your kid," he said. He looked back at his plate. "What was this called again?"

"It's a pizza pocket," PJ said. 

"Ah." 

"The cooking gene must've skipped a sister," PJ said defensively. "My mom burns water. She passed it down to me - "

"It's fine," he interrupted. He grimaced, and took another bite, which was almost sort of nice. "I've had worse."

PJ didn't _want_ to smile, but the look on his face was so comically disgusted it was hard not to. A giggle slipped out before she could bite it back, and he shot her a dry look. 

"I don't wimp out on deals," he said, his mouth half full. "Although I'm not sure this counts as _solid_ food, exactly."

"Depends on your definition of 'solid,'" PJ said, popping the last bit of her own pocket into her mouth. "You get used to them."

"I sure hope not." He gave her a baleful look. "Do I have to eat the rest?"

"I suppose not." PJ risked another smile, which he didn't return, but the tension in the air had miraculously eased. She felt almost hopeful. "Is it that different? From the Manor you remember?"

"No, it's actually almost exactly the same," Alt-Chris said. "Aside from the people living in it."

"Which is why you hate it so much," PJ concluded. He shrugged. "It might help to talk about it. You know I wouldn't judge you."

He rolled his eyes. "That's not really my issue, but thank you."

"Aunt Piper then," PJ tried. "Look, I know not all of us have been that welcoming, but - you have to admit that you don't make it easy - "

He snorted, loudly. 

" - but you need to talk to _somebody,_ " she pleaded. "I'm an empath, you know. I can feel your emotions. I know how much pain you're in."

"No, sweetgrass," Alt-Chris said, but he didn't sound angry. Just tired. "I don't think you do."

"You don't know anything about me," PJ said dully. 

"I could say the same thing to you." He rose from the couch, not meeting her eyes. "Should we try again? I think I'm ready."

"If you say so," PJ said. She stacked their plates carefully, leaving them on the coffee table for later, as he fidgeted by the mouth of the stairs. When she looked over, he turned his head quickly away - as if he'd been watching her. "Will you actually try this time? Like, really."

"Yes, I will actually try," Alt-Chris said, still sounding sort of sulky. He gave her a tight smile though, as their eyes met. "I'm still not sure how it's going to help, though."

"It might help _you_ ," PJ said. She took a deep breath, pausing on the first step. "And that's the best that I can do right now, so I'm going to do that, damn it. Whether you like it or not. You hear me?"

Alt-Chris looked slightly taken aback, but nodded, much more solemnly than the agreement he'd given her seconds earlier. "Alright then."

"Good." PJ swallowed, and looked away as tears burned her eyes, not wanting him to see. Then she took a deep breath and started walking up the stairs, trusting that he would follow. "Good."

PJ hadn't known what her power was until she was seven or so, but she'd always had it, even when she was a baby. She used to start crying whenever someone in the room was upset, her mom told her. 

They gave her potions when she was little, to block out other people's emotions, but they would wear off a lot quicker than her parents noticed, and so PJ grew up perpetually confused: always upset about something, and not really understanding why. Just because she didn't have words for what it was she was sensing didn't mean she didn't feel it. Some days PJ wished they had just bound her powers completely until she was old enough to start controlling them. 

She did alright with it now. She'd learned, through trial and error, how to limit her exposure to emotions that she wasn't strong enough to suppress. She _never_ went to hospitals or police stations. And haunted places - cemeteries, old houses, churches - were even worse. Even the Manor had little nooks and crannies she didn't dare poke her nose into, where the leftover anger or grief still lingered from Halliwells long gone. PJ _swore_ that once she was old enough, she was going to move into a brand new house, in a brand new, boring suburb, with absolutely nothing in it that was more than two years old. Not even the furniture. 

Chris had always had an uncanny ability to keep himself blocked off from her empathy, which was a skill Alt-Chris apparently shared. Alt-Chris, however, didn't seem to notice he was doing it, which is why he slipped up more often than her Chris ever did. PJ didn't quite know how to feel about that - the implication that her Chris had shut himself off from her on purpose. All her life she'd thought he was doing it on accident, too. 

It was when he'd been drinking that Alt-Chris fumbled with it. The first time PJ had gone to badger him out of a binge, she'd nearly passed out at the strength of the angry, frustrated sadness that he was feeling. She'd opened the door and staggered beneath it, like it was a great wave of water that the door had been holding at bay. His entire apartment had stunk of it. 

So in a weird way, his bad habit actually helped. PJ sat across from him on the attic floor, and could feel every emotion clearly, as if he were broadcasting them to her deliberately, although she knew he wasn't. She didn't know why the thought hadn't occurred to her earlier - letting him drink a little before trying for a vision quest. It certainly had loosened him up. 

"You hate meditation, don't you?" she asked. 

"However could you tell?" Alt-Chris replied wryly. He gave a small grimace - barely there and then gone again - which PJ would've missed entirely if she hadn't sensed the stab of pain he felt to accompany it. "Is it a rule we have to sit on the floor? Can't I have a vision quest on a couch?"

"I don't see why not," PJ said kindly. As he moved, his knee brushed against the side of her leg, and an image flashed in her mind's eye: a car accident when he was a teenager, a bad leg break. Nobody had healed him; he'd had to let it heal the mortal way, and his knee ached ever since, especially when he sat cross-legged for too long. _Why on earth?_ she thought. _And why hadn't he said something earlier?_ "We can sit at the table if you'd like. Use the potion table for the fire."

Alt-Chris rose to his feet with another grimace. "Thank you," he said, just this short of relieved. "I'm telling you - once you hit thirty, every injury you've ever had starts coming back to haunt you. Even the ones you thought you'd healed from."

"Are you speaking literally or metaphorically?" PJ teased, helping him move their spell supplies over to the little table they mostly used for brewing - although lately it had doubled more as a lunch table, during everyone's research all-nighters up here. "I'm sorry, I should've offered sooner."

"It's alright." He seemed to be trying to be as careful with her as she was trying to be with him, overly courteous in a way that clearly didn't come naturally to him. "We could just skip right to it. I'm not suited for meditation; it's probably not going to help anyway."

"It's supposed to get you into the right mindset," PJ argued, but she had a hard time meaning it. 

"I've done one of these before. I don't need it," Alt-Chris said, sitting down across from her heavily. 

"You could've said something earlier! I thought you hadn't."

He shrugged. "It was only once."

PJ sighed, taking her own seat with a resigned sigh. "Fine. Let's just get to it then."

Alt-Chris watched her carefully, as she set up the ingredients for the spell. It wasn't complicated, but if you didn't close the salt circle all the way, the fire would rise up really big. Wyatt had burned his eyebrow off like that once. "I know you don't go into the vision with me, but you'll still feel my emotions, right?"

PJ faltered. "I mean - "

"I know you don't do it on purpose. But I can feel your magic, PJ. When you sense what I'm feeling, it's like - someone knocking on the door of my head, or something."

PJ had never heard of such a thing before. Could the rest of her family sense it too? She wasn't sure how she felt about that. "I don't mean to pry."

"I know. You can't help it." Alt-Chris took the bag of salt from her, continuing the circle on his side of the table, so she didn't have to reach over the fire bowl. "I'm just saying - if this really is supposed to help me - the things I'm going to be feeling will be fairly strong, so - "

"I'm used to that."

"I don't think you are," Alt-Chris said, shaking his head. He finished the circle, and set the bag down carefully on the floor, next to his chair. "How much has Piper told you? About the differences between my world and yours?"

"Not a thing," PJ said honestly, "but you just said it yourself. I'm an empath." She gave him a look. "And I'm not an idiot. I know enough."

"Fair enough." Alt-Chris rubbed his face, already looking exhausted. "I just wanted to warn you."

PJ felt a stab of guilt, then. "We don't really have to do this, if you're not ready. I think you should eventually, but you have to be open to healing, otherwise it will just traumatize you even more, and that's not worth it."

"How am I supposed to know whether or not I'm 'open to healing?'" he asked incredulously. "Do you honestly think I _want_ to be fucked up for the rest of my life?"

"No. But some people make being fucked up part of their personality," PJ said. "Like a defense mechanism."

He visibly thought about this for a second. "I don't think I do that."

"Well. Good." She took a deep breath. "I could come in with you."

He looked conflicted. "Well that's an even worse idea, I think."

"It's stronger when there's two of us. And I've done it loads of times, I know how to navigate it." PJ bit her lip. "Maybe that's why it hasn't been working, on the quests I did alone. Maybe we need to be there together - to bridge together your life with my Chris' life. Maybe then we'll actually _learn_ something."

Alt-Chris still looked torn. "Listen, don't take this the wrong way, but you're, what, sixteen?"

"Seventeen," PJ said automatically, realizing a second later that it made her sound even younger, defensive about the difference. 

"I haven't led a child-proof life," Alt-Chris said, as if she hadn't even spoken. "I don't think your parents would like it, if I let you see some of the things that I'm probably going to see - "

"What are you, a Vietnam vet? Come on," PJ snapped, her patience thinning. Her whole family would probably agree with him; they all think she's too headstrong, too stupid, too naive to know what she's doing. She's spent a lot of time resenting that - and now, in the aftermath of _this,_ she's having a _really_ hard time believing that they all don't think it's all her fault. Her vision quest spell. Her summoning circle. And she was the one who'd broken it. Never mind that they'd found a note from Chris, practically confessing to doing it himself. Never mind that every expert they'd found had told them that keeping the circle intact wouldn't have helped. PJ can feel it - their anger, and their blame. "Wyatt told me you killed the other him. Is that what you're worried about? Because I already know."

A cold silence descended, and Chris' face went distant. PJ's breath froze in her throat, and her anger instantly morphed into shame. "Did he, now."

"I - " PJ swallowed thickly, backtracking. "I mean - he guessed, and then he told me. Something we heard Aunt Piper saying to my mom. Um." She looked down at the table, unable to meet his eyes. "Sorry. I'm sorry."

He didn't say anything for a long minute, and when she dared to look back up, he was lighting one of the candles, his expression neutral in the light of the flame. "Never mind," he said, after another tense second, shaking out the match, and lifting the candle to use it instead, to light the others. "You're right. You're all grown up, huh?" He laughed a little bitterly. "Fine. Together, then. Don't say I didn't warn you, sweetgrass."

"Why do you call me that - 'sweetgrass'? It's a weird nickname."

"It's a term of endearment. Like 'honey' or 'baby'. It's what I used to call my kids." Alt-Chris looked curious, distantly so, when he met her eyes. "You don't use it here?"

"I think...I think you mean 'sweetpea,'" PJ said, her heart still beating a little too fast, like it always did when dealing with confrontation. PJ wasn't built to fight with people - she felt too much. "Or 'sweetheart,' maybe. Do you use those, in your world?"

"We used 'sweetheart,' but not the other one," Alt-Chris said. "Weird, the little differences. Isn't it?"

PJ nodded silently, watching him finish lighting the last candle. With a wave of his hand, the lights turned off, and then they were ready. 

"Last chance to back out, Prudence," Chris said. It was the first time he'd used her real name, and PJ jolted a little in surprise. Her Chris was the only one who ever used it - everyone else only ever called her 'PJ.' "I won't think any less of you."

"But I'll think less of myself," PJ said. She squared her shoulders. "Suicide pact? I won't blab about what I see, if you do the same for me?"

"Sure." A brief smile, almost shocking against the dark circles beneath his eyes. "'Suicide pact.' I like that."

"Metaphorical suicide," PJ clarified. "To be clear."

"Thanks for the distinction," Alt-Chris said archly. "And the vote of confidence, too."

"Well, you're the one drinking his way through his emotions," PJ said with a shrug. She even tried a smile, and to her surprise, Chris just laughed, looking a little impressed. She sat up a little straighter, in her pride. "Do you remember the incantation, or do you want me to do it?"

"I remember," Chris said, holding out his hand. PJ took it with only slight hesitation. "Sorry in advance. Sweetgrass."

"You really gotta stop calling me that," PJ said. 

In 1943, at the height of the Second World War, the Halliwell Manor was occupied by Grace Bowen and her two sons, Richard and Marcus. They were only six and nine years old, respectively, but Grace was still worried about the war, waking up from nightmares of Army officials pounding on her door in the middle of the night, plopping helmets on their tiny heads and dragging them off to Europe. Irrational, she knew, but she couldn't help it: the news seemed to become grimmer each day, and all the protection spells her grandmothers had taught her didn't seem to do much to shield her mortal sons from the demons that attacked with increasing regularity. Every week, there was another one; Grace could barely keep up. 

Grace was not a particularly powerful witch, not like her mother had been - the great Priscilla Bowen, glamorous photographer, slayer of evil. After being forced to kill her own cousin, Portia Russell, in 1922, Priscilla gave up her magic, stripping her own powers and turning her back on her heritage. She married a mortal, and the result was, of course, Grace, who had just enough magic to defend herself, but not much more than that. Her husband was a newspaper journalist, and died mere months into the war, on campaign in Germany. Grace's grandmothers followed soon after: first Grandmére Hortense, from pneumonia, and then the equally formidable Philomena Baxter, who had actually been Grace's first cousin once removed, but who was keeping track? Grace had always just called her "Granny."

Her sons had no magic, which Grace was thankful for - no need for them to get involved in her family's messiness; the world was dangerous enough, wasn't it? The rest of the family was scattered to the winds, by the 40s - Paloma's children were grown, seeking fortunes on the East Coast, and Philomena's illegitimate daughter Penelope was being raised quietly in the Castro, learning the craft at her mother's Whitelighter's knee. Everyone else was dead, or as good as dead, and the Manor was left to Grace - who had never really wanted any of it, if she was being honest, had always been scared by the stories of her mother's beautiful cousin, seduced into evil by a warlock. The bedtime stories of Grace's childhood had been filled with monsters, as a warning from her grandmothers - a reminder to keep her eyes open always, for Grace's best defense would be to see them coming from far away. She had neither the power nor the wit of her ancestors, and marrying a mortal made her even more vulnerable - her sons, too. 

Perhaps that was why she had nightmares. Her anxieties were her constant companion, from childhood on - and the loss of her beloved Charlie had turned Grace into a near-hermit. She left the house only to do the shopping, and to walk the children to and from school - the neighbors all left her alone, out of pity and with the faint revulsion that people develop towards those who've been touched by tragedy. A childlike sort of fear that made you avoid those who suffered a fate that you were desperately hoping to avoid. 

Her inheritance kept the gas on and the icebox full, and that was the only thing Grace didn't worry about: as she grew older, she stopped leaving the house at all. By the time her boys were grown, she hadn't left the Manor in years - when they'd send letters back home from university, they'd attach a note addressed to the postman, asking him to walk them up the steps and slide the mail beneath the door, knowing that their mother wouldn't bother to even walk down the sidewalk to the mailbox. Marcus died at the age of twenty-nine, in a car accident in Modesto, and that was when Grace stopped speaking. Richard and his wife Melody moved into a modest apartment down the road, in order to keep an eye on her - Melody had half a mind to work out a way to get her out of that big creepy house, move her in with them, but of course Grace wouldn't budge, and as little as Richard knew of his mother's family history, he knew well enough to let it alone. 

And so, the rest of Grace's life played out: silent and scared, knitting the days away in the attic. The most noise she ever made was a soft humming, on early mornings when she could see the sunrise: the closest she ever got to contentment. When she died, and her second cousin Penelope inherited the house, an imprint of her anxious soul remained, in the very spot where Piper, Prue, and Phoebe Halliwell kept their Book of Shadows. It was this echo that protected the book - not their grandmother Penny, as they thought for so many years. Grace's anxieties were what pushed it off its pedestal whenever a demon came near, what scrambled its pages whenever someone with ill-intent tried to read it. And when PJ Halliwell was eleven years old, she woke up from a nap on the attic's couch from a nightmare about two young boys being dragged off into the night with Army helmets on their little heads, crying out for their mother as they were carted off to Europe. 

"Jesus, no wonder everyone's always so uptight in this house," says Chris. Not her Chris, but a Chris she knows, whose voice is coming from all around her. "Come over here, PJ. Stay with me, kiddo."

PJ goes. She finds his face first, and then his arms, and then suddenly he's there with her in person, standing outside of Grace's kitchen, the herb garden tickling their knees as they peek through the window. Grace Bowen is in there - their second cousin once removed, daughter of Priscilla and student of Philomena - making fried chicken. It smells pretty good. 

"Poor girl," Chris says, shaking his head. He takes PJ's hand, pulling her away from the window. "Her family really did a number on her."

"Her husband died," PJ says, sort of distant, her mind still caught in the whirlwind of Grace's fear. "They never recovered his body. She kept the flag they gave her on the mantle."

"Yeah, but before that her mother ran off on her, and her grandmothers scared the living shit out of her," Chris says, pulling more insistently. "Too chicken shit to teach her the craft properly. Come on, kiddo." He pulls again, and suddenly the Manor is melting away, into a blank, wide expanse of green grass. "There we go, that's better."

PJ blinks, startled back into coherence. "Whoa. Did you do that?"

"I told you I didn't need to meditate." Here in the visionscape, Chris looks different - younger, somehow, and he's wearing different clothes. A well-worn leather jacket that looks a size or two too big, and his hair is longer, falling into his face. PJ looks down at herself, to check her own appearance, but she looks the same - same sundress, same boots she always wears in the vision quests. An outfit her mother once dressed her in for a Samhain ceremony, one that she can't ever shake in the psychic realm. Phoebe Halliwell reaching out to butt her nose in, even here in the fifth dimension. "Is it like that for you all the time?"

She blinks, startled again by his voice. Who's controlling the quest here - her or him? He's been holding out on her for sure. "You mean my empathy? Yeah, pretty much."

Chris whistles, low and long. "Do your parents know how strong you are?"

"My mom does," PJ says. She's not sure about her dad - he's perceptive enough to guess, but PJ doesn't really talk to him about magic stuff. It's how he prefers it - he makes cookies and stays out of the way, for the most part. "She thinks my Cupid ancestry amplifies it somehow, makes it more intense than the empathy power she's got."

"She's probably right about that," Chris says, "and what about your cousins? Wyatt?"

PJ shrugs, not wanting to explain. It was easier sometimes to just let everyone think she was self-righteous or impulsive or weird, or whatever, than to try and explain the way the emotion took hold of her sometimes, made her do things she wouldn't normally do. It's not like Wyatt would understand, as headstrong as he is himself, and Chris - her Chris - figured it out on his own, long before PJ ever came up with the words to tell him. "Thanks for pulling me out."

Chris shrugs. "Is that where you meant to start?"

"Not really. But I could feel Grace in the attic. She manifested just as you were saying the incantation." PJ smiles wryly. "She always gets riled up whenever I do a spell. She worries about me."

Chris shakes his head at that, but fails to comment, reaching out instead for her hand. "You're something else, you know that?" The edges of his field of grass feel a little spongy, like they're not all the way solid, and PJ steps carefully, holding on tight to his arm as they walk. She feels a little drunk herself, come to think of it. Maybe letting him have the whiskey hadn't been such a great idea after all. "So, lead the way, boss. What should we explore - my daddy issues, my childhood trauma? My deep-rooted insecurity complex? Maybe the time I got beat up in eighth grade by the class bully?"

"I can't imagine anyone being able to beat you up," PJ says, just as a flash of an angry face flits across her mind's eye - a stout fourteen-year-old with bright red hair. "Yuck. His name was _Glen?_ "

"Nasty kid. I used to hide in the art teacher's room to avoid him, but my father wanted me to face him. Said it would...build character, or something." A figure in the distance - Uncle Leo, but different somehow - his face wrinkled with age, his features set in sternness. PJ shivers. "He sprained my wrist. Dad refused to heal it."

"Jesus," PJ mutters. Maybe Chris' family was more messed up than they'd thought - Uncle Leo would never do that. "Why don't we start with something happier? Show me how you met Bianca."

The mention of her name turns the grass dark indigo, the sky above them deepening into a starry night sky. The light reflects on Chris' face, which is now even younger than before. "One of the best days of my life. In retrospect."

"No kidding," PJ says, looking around at the buildings climbing their way up towards the sky, melting into existence as Chris forms the memory around them. The air is suddenly humid, frizzing up her hair, and in her ears is the sound of a busy city, with people talking in a language she doesn't recognize. "Is this…"

"Jakarta. You're hearing Indonesian. Probably not accurate though, just how I remember it - I never learned to speak it." Chris leads her through a chaotic street, the people from his memories busy and faceless, the cars and storefronts not anymore detailed than colored blurs. "Bianca did, though. She knows how to speak a little of everything. Or she can at least understand a little of everything. She once talked us out of being arrested in Ancient Egyptian, even - long story." Beneath their feet, the city scrolls through night and day, pavement and grass and cobblestone, before it rolls to a stop in a beautiful, upscale restaurant, with a balcony looking out over the entire city. Sitting before them, at a table with a glass of wine at her elbow, is a young woman of about twenty, with long black hair and a pointed, annoyed expression on her face. Bianca. 

"Wow, she's a knockout," PJ says. 

"The most beautiful woman I've ever known," Chris agrees. They sit down at the table across from her, still holding hands. PJ's afraid to let go - the edges of the vision still feel a bit shaky - the leaves on the vines that crawl up the edge of the balcony are trembling, vibrating with weird colors, as if trying to escape the confines of Chris' vision. "I hired her for a job. She was the only Phoenix still alive and working, at the time - most of the others had been vanquished in the civil war in the Underworld - this would've been when Bianca was just a child. But my uncle was directly involved in that; she didn't trust me at first."

"You're a Halliwell," Bianca says, her voice scornful, "the son of a Charmed One, no less, and you want me to take your job on _faith?_ Get real, hotshot."

Chris smiles fondly. "I deserved that one," he tells PJ. 

"What were you hiring her to do?" PJ asks, desperately curious. As if she can hear her, Bianca turns her face in PJ's direction, taking a sip of wine. She's alive but not - tapping her fingernails on the table, flipping her hair as she listens to a voice PJ can't hear. All PJ can feel are Chris' emotions, attached to the memory - nostalgia, love, affection, lust. She shivers beneath the weight of them, clenching her fingers tightly around his palm. 

"Your mother was a very different woman in my world, sweetgrass," Chris says gently. Behind Bianca's head, in the sky of the Jakartan sunset, the clouds twist into symbols, over and over: a triquetra, with its diamonds torn apart, a sun wheel with odd points at its angles, an Elven star inverted and blazing in bright red. "Prue survived, and they never met Paige. Phoebe never became the middle sister - never had to temper herself to keep the family together." PJ watches, in the swirl of Bianca's wine, a picture of her mother's face - young, smiling with all her teeth, her head tilted back in a laugh. "She married a demon named Cole Turner, but he died - committed suicide - when Phoebe was still pregnant with their son. You and your sister never existed."

"Whoa," PJ says, humbled. In her mind's eye, she can see it: a man with broad shoulders and a deceptively kind face, dark eyes, similar to her own father in appearance but also very, very different. 

"The baby died too," Chris continues, sad but detached somehow, like he's telling a tragic story that happened to someone else. Which he is, in a way. "Phoebe was devastated. In the months after their deaths, she used a summoning of the dead spell to summon Cole - repeatedly, and in secret - she knew my mother and my aunt Prue would disapprove. At first it seemed to help, but she kept doing it, for years - and eventually the spirit she was summoning was her son's, not Cole's."

"But not really her son," PJ says, feeling it as she says it. 

"No. It was infecting the entire house - its presence. It wasn't human - not a demon," Chris says, tilting his head at the facsimile of Bianca, still obliviously flipping her hair and drinking her wine, caught up in a different memory, "but not really the baby Phoebe would've had, either. We're still not sure _what_ it was - only that it was able to infiltrate our family through Phoebe's weakness - her grief."

"Is that what turned your brother?"

Chris shrugs. "Maybe. Possibly. No one knows for sure. Wyatt didn't lose control until several years later." He looks over at PJ, with a young teenager's appearance - younger than PJ, even. The age he must've been when he met Bianca, she realizes with a start. "I hired Bianca to kill it. I didn't trust my parents, or Phoebe, to do it. But someone outside the family, with experience in demonic possession…"

"How do you know about that?" Bianca asks sharply, her image flickering a little, like a tape that's suddenly skipped. "I asked you - I said - how do you _know_ about that?"

Chris regards her sadly. "Her father," he says. "He was taken by a similar entity. She killed the demon, but her father was so weak from the possession itself that he died as well. This happened not even a year before we met."

PJ looks back at Bianca, who is agitated, clutching the edge of the table like she's about to bolt. As PJ watches, she flinches violently, her entire body jerking backwards against the back of her chair. 

"The Charmed Ones? No. Are you crazy? No way. I'm not strong enough, they'll destroy me!"

"I won't let that happen," Chris says, playing along for PJ's sake. "I swear to you on my magic, Phoenix, I'll protect you from the fallout afterwards. But you're the only one I could find that could possibly pull this off - and if you tell me no, then my aunt's as good as dead."

Bianca looks torn, biting her lip in uncertainty. PJ can almost smell the wine she's drinking - feel the fear and suspicion that must have been dripping off the table during this conversation, from both parties. What it must've taken for Chris to do this, she thinks. How far did it get, to push him to asking someone like her for help? 

As if sensing her question, Chris answers it - still participating in the memory, but holding her hand tightly, reminding her that he's still aware of her presence. "Any longer and it'll take her over completely. She barely remembers herself now, and my parents are afraid they'll kill her if they vanquish it, so they won't act. My other aunt agrees with me, she'll help, but - we have to do something _now._ She killed all the animals in the neighborhood in her sleep last night, Phoenix. It won't be long before it gets worse."

"Jesus," PJ mutters, feeling sick. 

"If it really is her dead son," Bianca says shrewdly, "she won't thank you for it. My mother certainly never thanked me, for saving my father."

"Your mother liked him better as a demon," Chris replies, and Bianca's expression tightens. "Isn't that right? You were saving him from _her,_ as much as from the thing that was inside of him."

" _Qué chingados_ ," Bianca snaps, "you keep your mouth shut about my family, gringo."

"You can dish it out, but you can't take it?" Chris challenges, reaching out for his own glass of wine, which has suddenly appeared at his elbow. "Some bad ass assassin you are."

"I'm no assassin," Bianca spits, an athame flaming into existence into her hand. Chris tenses, ready to move, but all she does is toss it onto the table between them with a clatter, its hilt faced towards Chris. On the handle is a rune PJ doesn't recognize, but whatever it is makes Chris go still in his chair. "And if you want my help, Charmed Son, then you should show me some respect. A lesson from an elder."

"Elder?" Chris scoffs, but moves to take the athame cautiously. His other hand is still linked tightly with PJ's. "This is a Russell family athame."

"Distant cousins of yours, aren't they?" Bianca says. "An ancestor of yours, that fell in love with a warlock? Everyone knows the story."

Chris places the athame back on the table carefully, pushing it back in her direction. "Well made," is all he says. "They deserve the reputation they have. They're true artisans."

Bianca places one hand on the hilt, and the blade vanishes into black smoke. PJ holds her breath, enraptured. "You're just a boy, aren't you? How old are you?"

Chris' shoulders stiffen. "I'm fifteen."

Bianca's smile turns sad. "Your parents won't help?" She scoffs. "Good witches. So paralyzed by their own consciences. It's a miracle any of them survive long enough to breed." 

If that offends Chris, in any way, he doesn't show it, although PJ can feel the emotion it inflicts. Anger, and a not insignificant amount of shame. "A Russell athame will kill my aunt. I think you know why."

"I won't use it unless I have to," Bianca says, obliquely giving her agreement to help, without actually saying it. PJ shakes her head, impressed and sort of...repulsed, all at the same time. _What a life these people lead_ , she thinks. _What a world they must come from._ "But you should know my cards, if I am to help stack your deck. Hm? What's your secret weapon, Charmed Son? A vanquishing potion in your pocket? A vial of my blood for safekeeping? My mother would've been happy to hand _that_ over to a Halliwell."

"I think you know that I have a vanquishing potion already," Chris says, "I'm not stupid. But I won't use it either, unless I have to. And I really hope you don't give me a reason." 

"You trust too easily," Bianca replies. "I'm not your friend."

"But you are my ally, aren't you?" Chris shakes his head. "You don't want the thing inside of Phoebe to be let loose upon the world any more than I do. You were scared enough as it was, of what it did to your father. You know how ugly it would be, how much damage it could do, with the power of a Charmed One."

"Is it the same?" she challenges, leaning forward in her seat. "You speak as if it is. The thing that took my father, and the presence that wants your aunt."

"It's close enough," Chris says, with finality. "Evil is evil. At least this kind of evil. Up here in the real world, there might be shades of grey, but down there? Beyond the veil of death? It's all just black and white. Predator and prey."

Bianca leans back in silence, lifting one hand to her chin, folding it beneath her pursed lips. 

"My aunt made a deal with the Source," Chris says, and PJ knows he's now speaking to her, not Bianca, who is frozen in place, her eyes distant. "When they were young, when Prue and my mother were attacked by an assassin that killed them both, Phoebe made a deal. They had a time demon that was able to reverse it, but in exchange Phoebe had to give them a piece of her soul. Cole was with her; he'd taken her down there at her request. I never knew for sure, but I always suspected that was one of the reasons he killed himself - he was plagued with guilt, for the rest of his life. That's all I remember of him - he was a quiet man, when I was young, very serious - but kind. He was very kind to me." Chris trails off for a moment, caught in an emotion that almost takes PJ's breath away with its intensity. Red-hot pain, with a sharp, bright blue spike of regret. "After he died, they came to collect on their debt. Maybe. Or maybe they'd always had her - I don't know. Either way, we almost lost her. And really - if I'm being honest with myself - _I_ never really had her at all."

PJ swallows back tears. "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault." With a blink, Chris looks like himself again - the adult version, with tired eyes and scarred hands. "She pulled it off, at any rate. And Bianca was right, when she said they wouldn't thank me. None of them ever looked at me the same way ever again."

"And then," PJ says, breathless with horror, "your brother." 

Chris nods shortly. "That came later," he says. "Come on. Let's take a break."

"A break?" PJ stammers as the ground beneath them vanishes - Bianca and Jakarta and that eerie sunset, blinking out of existence in the space of one blink to the next. "Man, you really can control it, can't you? You were totally holding out on me."

"Can you blame me? This isn't exactly my idea of fun." Back to the wide field of grass, Chris tugs her along, insistent and pushy as ever. "Your turn, sweet - "

"Don't say it," PJ warns.

" - heart," Chris finishes, with a triumphant smirk. "Show me something happy."

The memory forms before PJ even really decides to show it to him; her bedroom, on one of the nights that her Chris came to visit. Alt-Chris looks taken aback at the sight of his alternate self, and then he laughs at the sight as it registers: his face plastered with green and black paint, in PJ's bad attempt at some sophisticated Halloween stage makeup. She'd gone through a slight musical theatre phase. "Wow."

"He was always very patient with me," PJ says smugly. She closes her eyes, and concentrates, and the scene morphs again, to a dim memory of when she was young - Chris holding her in his lap as they watched an episode of some Star Wars show, both of them singing along together to the theme music. "He was my best friend. The only one who I felt like really liked me."

"You're not close with Wyatt?"

"Nobody's close with Wyatt," PJ says without thinking, the visionscape making it too easy to be truthful. "I mean - Uncle Henry and Aunt Paige are. But me and Chris - we could never really get along with him that well. It always ended up in a fight."

"Yeah, he's sort of confrontational, isn't he?" Chris smirks. "My Wyatt was the same. We were never close either." 

PJ feels the darkness, swirling beneath the sentence, and decides to push him past it, instead of asking. "Wanna see something funny?"

"Sure, kiddo."

PJ closes her eyes and concentrates again, summoning the memory with some difficulty, fighting her own embarrassment. Sure enough, she can feel herself blushing when she opens her eyes to it: her own twelve-year-old self, crying in distress in a graveyard, as an entire cemetery of ghosts gather in a chaotic circle, yelling and arguing in panic. Through the silvery wisps of the spirits, she can just barely see her mother and father, frantically casting a counterspell in the middle of the graveyard, by the power nexus beneath the oak tree. 

"This is supposed to be funny?" Chris asks. He releases PJ's hand, finally, to walk over to the memory of her younger self - still crying, with her hands clasped over her ears. "Jesus, honey. You were just a little kid."

"It's funnier when we tell the story, instead of seeing it, maybe," PJ says. "It's always a hit when Mom tells it at family dinners." Chris looks up, his face slightly appalled, and PJ rushes to reassure him. "Really - I was just scared, that's all! It's not like, a _trauma_ , or anything - I was trying to summon the spirit of this little girl that I kept sensing at my school - she'd died on the farmstead that used to be in the same spot as my junior high building, in the 1800s. But I messed up the incantation and ended up summoning the entire graveyard." PJ smiles crookedly. "Her name was Wilhemina - she was my friend. I could hear her singing sometimes in math class...I just wanted to summon her to check on her, you know, make sure she was okay. My mom and dad thought it was pretty cute - after they got rid of all the ghosts, that is."

"Which one?" Chris asks, still crouched by PJ's younger self. 

"Her." PJ moves over to the spirit of her old friend - the one everyone _thought_ had been imaginary. PJ regards the little ghost sadly - with her hair plaited in braids, her face creased in fear, she can tell that she'd made it worse, by summoning her. PJ should've left her in peace. "She died of some kind of disease. She was in such pain, when she passed. I just wanted to make her feel better."

"I think you have a weird definition of 'funny,' PJ," Chris says, joining her at the ghost's side. "It's easier for them to ignore you, isn't it? To blame you for things. I can feel your anger, kiddo - don't try to lie."

PJ swallows. "It's not their fault. I _am_ reckless."

"You're a teenager. And a Halliwell - of course you're reckless." Chris reaches out to take her hand again. "Chris could see it. Couldn't he?"

Before her eyes, Wilhemina fades away, to be replaced with a watery vision of her mother's bedroom - that time that PJ had accidentally opened a portal to a shadow realm, because of a spell that Wyatt had mistranslated. Her mom had stayed up all night, trying to write her own spell to get in, to retrieve her dad and Aunt Piper, who'd fallen in by accident. PJ had covered for Wyatt on that one - it was hardly her mom's fault, for jumping to conclusions. It's stupid to still be angry about it. 

"Magic is a responsibility, PJ," her mom says, slumped against the side of her bed, crumpled balls of paper at her feet. PJ had been trying to help - bringing her food and coffee throughout the night, flipping through the rhyming dictionary for ideas - but her mom hadn't exactly been in a great mood. "It can be a beautiful thing, but it's also a _dangerous_ thing. Maybe this time it's fixable, but what about next time? How can I trust you to take care of yourself, to protect yourself, when you don't take it seriously?"

"I _do_ ," PJ says, staring at the memory of her mother's face. "I do. I swear I do."

"Come on," Chris says gently, pulling her out of the memory. The world shifts once more, and PJ blinks back tears, watching her mother melt into colored mist - the warmth of her parents' bedroom turning back, once more, to the field of grass. "It's intense, isn't it? The visionscape wants the real meaty stuff. The childhood trauma, the inner anxieties. Even when you try to keep it lighthearted, it still digs in where it hurts."

"I'm usually better at controlling it," PJ says, wiping tears away from her face. "You're better than me. Apparently."

Chris shrugs. "Just takes practice. Practice and control." He pins her in place with a pointed look. "Your family's reckless too, Prudence. It's not your fault that you're just emulating their behavior."

"But - "

"You were a child," Chris says gently, cutting her off before she even starts. "And it's not your fault I'm here. I'm sorry if I've been mean to you - I was dealing with my own shit. But you're just a kid, and it was unfair of me."

PJ pushes her eyes closed, feeling the tears start to spill over, to her horror. She hadn't known, before, how much that was weighing on her. 

"Guilt's a useless thing to carry. All it does is blur your vision." He places a gentle hand on her head, cradling her wet cheek in his palm. "Don't think I haven't noticed that you're the only one willing to reach out to me - to _put up_ with me, really. Your kindness is what will temper all that power, honey. If you nurture that big heart of yours, you'll find the balance eventually. That's the way forward."

PJ takes a deep breath, in and out, like her father taught her to do when she felt overwhelmed. It helps, a little. "Can you show me your kids? I'd like to see them."

"Sure. Why not." Chris squeezes her shoulders once, and then lets go. "Gotta open your eyes, though."

PJ does, and what greets her is another restaurant - this time, with wide marble floors, and big rotary fans in the windows, with blue streamers tied to the blades, whipping back and forth in a circle. All around her are people laughing and talking, and in the middle of the chaos: Chris and Bianca. This time a bit older, a bit wearier. There are laugh lines around Bianca's mouth, and she's heavily pregnant - leaning hard into her Chris' shoulder, smiling down at a little boy, seated next to them in a high chair. A waiter is bent over their table, speaking to the Chris in the vision - PJ only took a couple semesters of Spanish, she only makes out a few words - but the warmth of the scene is hard to miss. 

"She's about to go into labor," Chris says, pulling PJ closer. As they approach the table - passing by wisps and ghosts of other people, faceless figures of a crowd Chris probably hadn't bothered to remember the details of - she can see the face of the little boy come into sharper focus. "That's Matías. Matí."

PJ kneels down to get a good look at him. That Halliwell chin, she would know anywhere. "How old is he now?"

"Almost thirteen. Nellie's ten." Chris shakes his head, a painful sort of love blazing on his face. "It goes by so quickly. You really have no idea."

PJ's heart twists. "She looks like she's overdue."

"She was, by almost a month. I was nervous the whole night, worried something would happen - Bianca had a hard time, during the last half of the pregnancy, the baby's magic was hard to control. Nellie's psychic - like you are. Bianca struggled with it." Chris shakes his head. "She's not suited for visions, to say the least. She didn't like it at all. But she wanted to get out of the house - and I couldn't say no to her."

As PJ watches, Bianca lets out a shocked gasp, her hands flying to her abdomen. The Chris in the memory reaches out in alarm, and little Matías seems to go still as well, as if sensing what's about to happen. The waiter, walking away from the table, turns on one heel and blanches, seeing the pain on Bianca's face, and to PJ's delight - drops the pitcher of water he's carrying in his haste to get back to the table. Several tables around them jump up, and Bianca looks up at the commotion, a look of profound irritation crossing her face, clearly more angry about the fuss than by the pain she's feeling. 

Chris is laughing. "She hated the attention," he says. "Those old women that would stop her on the street and coo at her stomach, trying to touch the baby, give her advice - she _loathed_ it. She's a wonderful mother - the most gentle, loving woman - but she _hated_ being pregnant. It was very funny."

"Aunt Paige told me once that that was what Aunt Piper was like, when she was pregnant with Chris and Wyatt," PJ says distantly. "She couldn't stand all the mushy stuff."

"Yes, well." Chris retreats slightly, and one scene morphs into another: a lovingly cluttered bedroom, Bianca and her children curled up beneath a blanket, watching a movie on a television mounted on the wall. At the foot of the bed is an older woman with dark hair, lying sideways with her head propped in one hand, eating a rope of licorice. With a sudden jolt, PJ stands up straight: that must be Prue. "I wouldn't know."

"That one's me," the Prue in the memory says, pointing at the TV. PJ gasps out loud at the sound of her voice. "I'm the giraffe."

"No, you're the rhino!" cries the little girl, giggling in her mother's lap. Prue twists around, with a comically exaggerated look of offense on her face, which only makes her laugh more. "Auntie, you're a _rhino_."

"I think I know which animal I am, and I'm pretty sure I'm a giraffe - see?" Prue stretches her neck out, straining with a goofy look on her face. Even Bianca laughs, at that one. "I'm stubborn like a giraffe too. And I eat leaves." She sticks her string of licorice in her mouth and lets it hang down past her chin, chomping loudly. 

"Maybe more of a donkey, yes?" Bianca teases. At her side, Matías - older now, with bushier eyebrows and a darker tan to his skin, but still recognizable as the little boy from before - cracks a small smile. It falls as soon as it appears, though, and PJ gets a small chill, at the sudden shadow that falls over the boy's expression. "Donkeys are stubborn. We won't say the rude word, Auntie, for your sake."

"Appreciate that, Bee," Prue says, grinning. "Matí, what do you think? Which animal am I?"

"Papa's hurt," Matías says instead, making both Prue and Bianca's smile freeze on their faces. His face distant - like her mother's, when she's having a vision, PJ notices - he reaches out into the space in front of his body, holding out his palm like he's trying to get some invisible person's attention. "His face is cut. Mama, his face is - "

"Oh Matí, no, look, he's right there," Bianca says, gathering the boy in her arms, and pointing out a nearby window. Nellie, without being told, crawls away from her mother and into Prue's waiting embrace, like she's used to it. "Look, mijo, he's on the balcony, he's just reading. See? Chris! Chris, get in here - "

"His face is all cut," Matías insists, his face scrunching up, starting to get upset. "His face, Mama, they cut his face - " he reaches up and touches his chin with shaky fingers, and PJ's heart freezes. _All the way down my chin. It would've fucked up my face, if a Whitelighter hadn't healed it later._

"Shh, honey," Prue's saying, sweeping Nellie into her arms. "Bianca, don't, I'll go get him. It's alright, sweetie, your brother's fine, he's just had a bad dream. Chris - "

"They cut his face," Matías says again, weirdly insistent, still looking at the same spot he'd been reaching out to before, his head moving to track it even as Bianca pulls him away, carrying him in her arms towards the balcony doors. Outside, PJ can see Chris rising to meet Prue and Nellie, holding out his arms for his daughter, his face creased in concern - but PJ feels her gaze drawn back to the little boy - the look on his face, so familiar. Like she's seen it before, on another person. 

"My son," Chris says heavily, pulling PJ out of the scene, "has powers he can't control. It's like nothing we've ever seen before; we've been trying to find a way to help him for his entire life. He's got somewhat of a handle on it now - enough for him to attend a mortal school, anyway. For a few days a week, at least. But it's still...difficult." The pain in Chris' voice is unreal, and it feels like smoke, gathering around her, squeezing her throat shut. "It's not a psychic power, exactly, because dampening potions don't work on him. But he has visions like that - terrible ones. Like your Chris did."

PJ rises to her feet, shaky with disbelief. "He - he saw you with your face cut, here," PJ says, reaching up to mimic Matí's action, touching her own chin in the same spot. "Did he tell you anything else? About that vision, specifically?"

"It's one he has often, but he's never told us any more detail than that. Why?" Chris narrows his eyes. "That was one your Chris had?"

PJ nods. She breathes in, and then out, trembling, trying to remember her father's advice - hold for three seconds, exhale for five. Keep your shoulders straight, don't let the panic control you. "He told me about a lot of them. If they were _all_ the same ones as your son was having, maybe that's the connection Oriphel was talking about."

"It has to be," Chris says, his eyes still narrowed with thought. The scene before them freezes, a family in distress, but united in their front to weather it. PJ looks with stricken eyes at Prue, holding the memory-Chris' arm in support, her face calm. The strong and sure arms of Bianca, cradling her son to her chest. A far cry from the chaos of her graveyard memory, that's for sure. "I'd thought...of course I'd made the connection, between the visions you described your Chris having and Matías', but I didn't think...there were enough similarities between our universes that I'd thought it was a coincidence. Matí could've been seeing anything, after all, we'd always thought they were just omens, residual visions from spirits that he sensed, or something - it didn't mean...but if they were seeing the _same_ things, the _same_ events from the same timelines - maybe - "

"Time travel," PJ says, with a sudden thought. "The Chris who saved our Wyatt - the one who died at the same moment my cousin was born - Aunt Piper said that she and Uncle Leo always believed that he'd _merged_ with our Chris somehow, and that the remnants of his soul were what gave him those visions. But what if it's bigger than that? If it really was an accident like you think it was - if my Chris had the same power, the same ability to...see other dimensions, or exist between them maybe - then maybe that's why he stepped through to _your_ universe, specifically. He probably didn't mean to do it - if the portal opened the door for him, somehow, then maybe - "

"Holy oil," Chris interrupts. The scene around them shifts again, to another graveyard, a headstone with Bianca's name on it and an oily circle scorched into the ground around it. "The grave Wyatt and I found - you said it yourself, neither of you saw him tamper with the vision quest spell. But what does a vision quest _do,_ PJ? It transports your consciousness, to another plane. _This_ plane."

"Oh my God," PJ says. The sky above them is a swirling mass of color, a whirlpool kaleidoscope to match their frenzied realizations. "He wasn't trying to find her. He was just trying to _talk to her._ "

"And whatever it was that made him that way - " Chris swallows - "that makes my son this way, that makes them different from us - it made him vulnerable to it. If he was...altered by that time travelling version of himself, then maybe that means he...exists outside of our dimension, or maybe he can - he can manipulate them somehow, or interact with them in a way we can't. So whatever spell he cast on himself, to try and talk to Bianca on the vision quest - it led him to my universe. But it wasn't _her_ that he found - it was me. Or Matías, or both - " Something blanches in his face, then, his skin going sickly white. "My son. Matí - that must mean - "

"You don't know, it's just a theory," PJ says quickly, grabbing his arm, but it's already too late: the world around them starts spinning, reacting violently to his distress. "Chris! Chris, you have to calm down! We're just guessing, here - "

"Someone _did this_ to him? _I_ did this to him?" Chris says, ripping his arm away. Above their heads, the color starts to descend, and PJ flinches, pulling Chris down to his knees, next to her in the wet grass. The edges of the plane start to fluctuate, and PJ's breath feels squeezed from her lungs, like reality itself is pressing in on them. "End it. I can't - PJ, say the spell, I can't - "

"Hear these words, hear my rhyme!" PJ cries, just as the sky starts to fall in flaming chunks, scorching their feet. Chris bends over, his hands covering his face, and PJ takes another measured breath, forcing herself not to panic. "Heed my spell, within our minds! Send us back to whence we came, so that we may extinguish our questioning flame!"

"Fuck," Chris says on a gasp, "fuck. This fucking - "

" - _sucks_ ," PJ heard, and then a loud thump, like a stack of books falling to the floor. Pushing back from the table with a violent gasp, PJ grabbed her throat, blinking rapidly at the wooden walls of the attic, looking harsh and lurid in comparison to the dreamy color of the visionscape. Falling to her knees on the floor, PJ tried to breathe normally, the sulphur from the candles clogging up her throat, bringing tears to her eyes. 

Chris was on the floor. His head pressed to the carpet, his fists clenched into fists, he looked like he was having some sort of fit, and PJ crawled to his side with some difficulty to check on him. When she touched his shoulder, he jerked back as if struck. "Jesus," she heard, muffled against the floor.

"Are you okay?" PJ asked hoarsely. Looking around, she tried to orient herself - reality was always gritty and painful, in the first few moments. Everything looked hard, unforgiving. The very ground beneath her knees seemed to hurt, in its physicality. "Chris, say something. Are you alright?"

"Fine," Chris said on a groan. He pushed himself up slightly, enough to roll over on his back, and blinked up at the ceiling. "Holy shit."

"No kidding." PJ leaned hard against the leg of the table, noticing with a detached air that the candles had burned down to their wicks, the wax dripping down off the side of the table onto the floor. Man, they must've been in there for _hours_ \- they'd used brand new ones and everything. "Um. For the record? It's not usually like that. When I lead people on quests I mean - usually it's much, uh. Nicer."

"I think that was my fault, kiddo," Chris said, lifting shaking hands to his face. PJ felt her own hands shaking too - and her stomach was cramping with hunger pains, her throat scratchy and dry. "Sorry."

"Well," PJ said, "can't say you didn't warn me."

Chris laughed, loud and sharp. As PJ watched him, he then winced. "Jesus," he said again.

"We need to eat," she said. She craned her neck, looking around for her phone, spotting it on the charger plugged into the wall. When she pressed the button, the time display didn't really surprise her. "Oh my God, it's almost two o'clock in the morning. We were in there for almost twelve hours."

"Food, then, yes," Chris said, pushing himself to his feet with a groan. "My knee definitely _feels_ like it's been twelve hours."

"Water too, lots of water," PJ said, letting him help her to her feet with both hands. "Oh God, my mom's gonna freak - I told her I'd be home by nine."

"I'll vouch for you."

"Not sure that will _help,_ but thanks," PJ said. She limped toward the door, cracking it open cautiously, listening for her Aunt Piper, but the house felt empty and quiet - deserted, almost. Still in the Underworld then, PJ thought with resignation. "Come on. Let's raid the kitchen again. I'll text Mom - if she was really worried about me she would've found us, and interrupted the spell. So it probably won't be too bad."

Chris grimaced. "Please, not another pizza pocket."

"At two in the morning, after _that?_ You'll be lucky if I even manage to turn the microwave on," PJ said. She grabbed his arm, hooking her elbow through his. "Come on. Help me walk, my feet are still asleep."

"We could orb down, or - what is that you do? Beam?"

"And end up splattered all over the walls? No thanks."

"Always the hard way," Chris said, but he limped down with her nonetheless. 

Is this what _bonding_ felt like? PJ wasn't sure, but she was sort of willing to bet on it. 

The whiskey came out again - not that PJ protested. If there was ever a time that he deserved it, it was right after a vision quest like _that_. 

"This is terrible," Chris said, munching determinedly through a bag of pretzels. "If we'd come out of that thing an hour earlier, we could've ordered pizza."

"We'll order pizza for breakfast," PJ said. "Can I have some of that?"

Chris scoffed loudly. "No."

"Oh come on. It's not like I haven't had liquor before."

"Oh, okay, let me think about it," Chris said, twisting his face up mockingly. "Hm. _Fuck_ no."

"Fine," PJ said, slumping. "My Chris and I - we got drunk together once, you know."

"That sounds thrilling," Chris mumbles, wiggling the bag to shake loose the last of the pretzels at the bottom. 

"Right before he left for school. We stole a bottle of vodka from my mom's secret stash and stayed up all night watching old movies." PJ smiled at the memory. "Chris passed out first. He's kind of a lightweight."

"And you're not?" Chris asked archly. "You don't exactly strike me as a partier. No offense."

"I'm not. But I have, like, a fast metabolism, or something. Medicine always wears off super quick; it's hell when I'm sick." PJ crumpled up the Doritos bag she'd been crunching on, a little morose. "Do you think we're right? About what happened?"

"It makes more sense than any other theory we've come up with so far." Sobering, Chris lowered the bag to the couch, tossing it next to PJ's discarded one. "If Matías has the same power as your Chris does, that means it probably happened to him the same way. Which means that somebody in my world time travelled - altered the timeline in such a way that it affected Matí the same way it affected Chris."

"We _think,_ " PJ reminded him. "It's still just a theory."

"A good one," Chris said. He was looking off into the middle distance, much like Matí had been in the vision, staring at something that PJ couldn't see. "What does that mean - that something happened to us that my son had to fix? That there's some version of Matí out there, trying to change the timeline to prevent something?"

"I don't know, Chris," PJ said, reaching out to touch his arm. Much like in the vision, Chris flinched at first - but then turned his palm up, accepting her touch tentatively. "Maybe it means nothing at all. Maybe we're making connections that aren't really there, because we're so desperate to find an answer."

"Maybe," Chris said. He squeezed her hand. "My brother died in my arms, you know."

PJ closed her eyes. 

"We weren't close - and there was nothing of him left, when he died. When I killed him." Chris swallowed. "I killed him. I did that."

PJ kept her eyes closed, but kept her grip solid on his hand, not wanting him to sense her pulling away. "Thank you - for not showing me that. I could feel you directing me away from it."

"I tried." Chris sounded impossibly weary - like a man much older than he really was. "You have no idea what it's like, to wake up in a world where it didn't happen. A version of things where...where you avoided that, prevented it. He's a good kid, really - angry and impulsive, sure, but a good heart. All of you are good - you mean well, you try so _hard_." His voice shook a little. "Nothing like the Wyatt I knew. My Wyatt was mean - my father was mean, too. I never had this...this _warmth_ you all have. It's fucking agony."

"I'm sorry, Chris," PJ said, meaning it. "You deserved that just as much as my Chris did. I mean it."

"Yeah," Chris said, his voice falling away into quiet. "Yeah, I guess."

PJ thought, with a sadness that seemed to seep into her very skin, about her Chris - the melancholy, the pain, the persistent disquiet that seemed to follow him everywhere. He hadn't had a happy life - they all knew that. They'd tried to ignore it, pretend it was different, as if lying about what was happening was enough to make it not be true, but PJ could always see his pain, the way he saw hers. They weren't perfect, by any means - they could hurt each other like no one else. But yes, her family was good. Yes, they tried very hard. 

This Chris, holding her hand, was luckier in some ways: he had Bianca. A woman who loved him fiercely, two beautiful children, a good life, built on solid ground. He had Prue, and others, probably - people who loved him unconditionally. His demon uncle who died, his parents - for all that had happened, PJ could still feel the love he felt for them, muted by betrayal and estrangement, but yes - still there. There was the hope for healing still, beneath all the pain. It would take years for them to get there, but PJ knew they could do it, if Chris could only find his way back home. 

But her Chris? He felt different. Only after being in the visionscape with this version of him, could PJ tell the difference. This Chris was solid flesh and blood inside the vision - inescapably real, flawed and stubborn and proud, but her Chris? Going into the visionscape with him was like walking next to Wilhemina - trying to hold onto a ghost. Grasping for mist in your hands, not understanding why someone who felt so solid next to you would fall right through the floor, in the next moment. 

What that meant - PJ didn't know. She thought again about the holy oil - the note Chris had written - not to anyone in particular, she knew, and not a _suicide_ note, by any means - but a simple sentence. _So sorry, Mom._ It could've meant anything. What was he apologizing for? Leaving? Or for not leaving sooner? For knowing more than he should have, or for not knowing enough?

Maybe she didn't want to know. PJ kept her eyes closed, and mustered what little strength she had left, as tired as she was, and tried to project some calmness, some peace, to Chris through their hands. She could feel him sag a little in response, physically flinching at the transfer.

"Thanks," he said quietly, squeezing her hand again. "I mean - for everything, kiddo. Thanks."

"You can call me sweetgrass if you want," PJ said, opening her eyes. "I mean, if you're really attached to it."

"Better than 'kiddo?'"

"Much," PJ said, and he laughed. 

"I'll work on it," he said.


End file.
